Chema Mendez

(1)

Translated from Juan Rulfo’s 1953 short story collection “Llano en llamas”. Juan Rulfo is one of Mexico’s most acclaimed authors. He only wrote two books.

These are contradictions, but only to the spectator. They think I must be deeply concerned about the target to not hurt her, but it’s the opposite: I must not care; care is not mathematical, precise. Love is the worst thing that could happen.. to her. Then you want to reach the target, the knife penetrates.

The next knifes are barely approaching, the epsilons and deltas: ugly, distasteful, static. The problem to solve is that she, with her blade smile, has made me more focused, but she does not understand mathematics, she jeopardizes the show, she... loves. Some insane sense of disregard, towards herself, and more importantly, towards the craft, towards math. She throws those blade-looks directly at the target.

The knifes start landing further away and I have to accept the frustration, that something worse than carelessness is her drive: that she wants the knife to hit, that loving me is precisely her desire for the blade to... And I... She should understand that I’m precisely the last person she should—in her madness she even tried to make me jealous… Talking to that acrobat! She knows I hate—all for me to betray precision, to push me into—I try not to think about the crowd, it’s obvious they come for the wrong reasons, for my failure, they do not see the beauty of math. Am I the only one who does not want the knife to—anyone can land a knife in somebody... Anyone can die—she smiles—the knife approaches the limit—

Words are object-representations, the clearer the form of the object, the better the word. And we can become quite content to remain in words and trust them as long as they're good words. But there are also bad words, the offspring of a cancerous tendency of words to start growing off other words, and the farther down the chain from good words, the worse their quality. Bad words bring sickness, usurp reality, they're not to be trusted.

The word for gun is not useful, and that's why guns are real, because they’re irreducible to abstraction, which is to say: deceit. When you physically hold a gun it's immediately clear that its verbal avatar is quite useless. And this property extends to the rest of reality, where the actuality of a gun, its potentiality transforms reality into something eminently physical, unmediated and therefore real. This is an object whose form is not directed towards any intelectual process, for its purpose is to destroy, blow the brains, void the mind, stop words.

All tools transform the body. A a man in a horse becomes a centaur, a man in a car becomes “something”, the aggressive and misanthropic qualities heighten, until that sweet old lady becomes a mass murderer. Inert materials might give the sense that the relationship is unilateral: man creates and uses the tool. But objects also transform the user, inert should not give the idea of passivity, but that of an active form impressed upon the body. A man, through continuous contact with a gun becomes composite, a man-gun, acquiring the properties and accidents of the gun unto himself.

Humans create guns, and guns create man-guns. Yet the origin of this spiral of transformation is questionable. Maybe steel, iron, and other metals have always influenced man into inevitably shaping them into weapons. A gun, being just the unavoidable consequence of men being exposed to iron for long enough periods of time. And just as evolution makes no sense from any individual perspective, but only from a system, materials form an integral aspect of becoming.

As I held a gun for the first time, I started thinking as Gun and the world through its sight became the Gun-World. A consequence of this metamorphosis was that words started to fade and shrink as if parasites left hostless in the sun. Why do I indulge in writing this then? Maintain humanity? Is it a push-back from the parasitic words nested in me? I only know it is not fear that pushes me but a thrill, a vague intuition of something yet incomprehensible, that should be impossible: Gun-Words.

One day they where running through the woods towards the river to get some water. When they got there a huge wolf was waiting sitting with huge eyes set on them. They had never seen something like that, it was ten times as large as the wolfs they had seen and hunted. It's eyes where bright and yellow and intelligent.

Young humans, I am hungry, which one of you will feed me?

The kids looked at each other in terror, speechless. They thought of all the things the old man had thought them but none seemed to work.

If you don't decide maybe I should just eat you both.

Take me! I'm the oldest, I'll have more meat for you.

The wolf smiled baring it's fangs and took the oldest boy, who was just about to be 18, and ran into the forest. The youngest went back running to the old man and told him what had happened.

I see...

The old man seemed tired and sad.

I'll go looking for your brother. I might not come back. It's time you go look for your father, you'll have to cross the Blood Swamps, at the heart of the forest, where I've always forbidden you to go. That's where the Lord of Hawks's lives, the dark lord of the swamps. I'll give you a present which will help you through. Take this armband, it has magic in it which will let you know, if it get's tight, that someone is a foe, if it get's warm, that it's a friend.

The boy thus went deep into the forest, lamenting the loss of the old man and his brother. Three days he walked, eating berries, roots and rabbits, and then he came into a grove, which was bright and with many fruits, pink petals floated away from plum trees and the tuft was soft to rest on. He sat happy and ate and then he heard a laugh, but from a voice no animal he knew. His alert gaze scanned through the many trees and boughs and saw a girl peek from a plum, blue eyes and wide smile. He had never seen a woman, his blood thrilled and both feared at this sensation as delight and wonder filled him.

What are you doing here?

The girl asked in a chirpy voice that carried through the wind.

I have to cross the Blood Swamps.

Why?

To find my father.

The Blood Swamps are dangerous, why don't you stay here, there's plenty to eat, my house is warm… I could use the help of a man like you. After all why find someone you don't even know?

The boy was happy, the girl was beautiful and made his heart thump.

Maybe I could stay for some days!

He said awkwardly, as he was very excited. He thus went towards her, but the armband tightened and he was surprised and angered, for clearly she could not be a foe, so beautiful was this girl. He thought maybe the old man had mistaken the signs.

So he followed her, trying to ignore the tight armband.

As they walked he started noticing rotting deer, cairns of bones, and as he got closer to her a sharp smell intensified, the scent of blood. He grew worried. When they got to her home, there where hanging corpses throughout the red leaved trees.

I forgot something back there, in the grove, I'll go get it and then come back!

Her face frowned and her beauty seemed strange.

Don't worry we'll go there together tomorrow, come rest!

She said as she bared her arms.

I'm still feeling strong.

And he turned to go back, but then he felt something grab him. The girl had disfigured, and grown sharp razors and a long tongue that held him. In horror he was dragged towards the house, then he felt the armband grow warm, and saw among the weeds toad-licks, a poisonous herb that kills anyone who tastes it, he grabbed the toad-licks and rubbed his left arm with it.

I'll eat you up, I love eating stupid boys! I'll eat you from the toes up!

The monster girl snarled.

Here taste this arm first, see how good it smells!

I will!

She said with a laugh and the long tongue went over his arm with delight, wounding the boy. But then the monsters throat closed with hideous groans, the tongue lost it's strength and released the boy's arm, which was left gravely hurt.

Damn you!

She croaked and died.

He heard by the house a red fox cry. It was in a cage and he thought about it leaving it there, but he felt the armband warm up, and tired as he was he went to work at releasing it.

When he opened the cage, the fox hoped outside and circled the boy in joy. Then it saw the wounds in his arm and started licking them. The boy saw with amazement that his wounds had healed and petted the fox.

Can you take me to the Blood Swamps?

The fox started hopping and nodding as response. The boy got up and followed the fox. They walked for the rest of the day before coming to a dark mire. The fox nodded with it’s nose and went back. The boy rested for night.

At sunrise the boy entered the dark swamps. Red blood flowed and shinned over black mud filled with vermin of many kind, but beautiful white flowers grew over all of it, and their warm honeyed smell mixed with the metallic perfume of blood.

He trudged and waded through the swamps, and then found some dry land and stopped, he built a fire and rested. Then he woke with a start. The great wolf that had taken his brother was staring at him.

He could've run but the armband felt warm. He felt desperate, how could this be? that wolf had taken his brother!

As so you've come to be eaten too? How considerate!

The wolf opened it's maw to show the boy it's many sharp teeth. But the boy also saw his brother's knife buried at the top of the mouth.

What If I offer you something better? I'll take the knife that's stuck in your mouth.

The wolf seemed amused that the boy would dare offer something so foolish.

Alright, I'll just snap as soon as you take the knife out!

The wolf said with a terrible laugh.

The boy climbed to it's mouth, holding his breath from the warm and putrid breath, trying to find footing in the slippery and moist gums, took hold of the knife and pulled. And when he pulled it out, the wolf seemed surprised and then collapsed and transformed into a pale young woman in the dark mud. The boy then wondered at her for a while, then he snapped out of it and put his leather cloak he used for sleeping around her.

He carried her all day and then as it gloomed saw something illuminated in the bog, a tower and other buildings, big steps of white stone carried towards a black castle, big candles like pillars lit along the way, clearing the fog and vapors that wandered the coal colored trees that caged and enclosed the swamp. He saw three great birds flap around the mason structures, and one of them exhaled long fumes of fire.

He approached carefully and left the girl at the steps and climbed, but at the first step he was taken by the shoulders with a grip he could not fight. He was taken into the black castle, and thrown before the Dark Lord, a great figure with hideous armor and horned and thorned crown.

What a great fool! To dare come to the place where no one comes voluntarily, but where everyone is dragged to one day. What makes you, teenage boy, so stupid to do such a thing?

I'm looking for my father…

Your father? There's is only death here, that can be your new father! I'll even let you choose him!

He called the three great hawks to him, and they came through great windows in the dome of the dark hall.

These are fear, desire and suffering. Two of them the expel fire from their mouths. You'll choose one and stand before the trial. Your father will be fire.

And he felt hope, for the armband would surely help him. He approached them steadily, but the armband felt tight and warm. He tried to move the armband to get a better answer but it was no use. Then he saw one hawk had yellow eyes.

This one!

Cried the boy and two of the hawks exhaled violent fire in front of them, and then, when the heat and light had passed away, the boy saw he was not hurt.

The Lord of Hawks then rose and took off his crown.

Now you are my son. Take this castle, take these hawks, tomorrow you marry the girl you left at the entrance door.

Painting by Keith Hill - Oil on Canvas 18” x 24”

The room's floor has been padded, a purple curtain covers the window side of the room, a mattress pokes it’s tail out as buttress against the exterior, then a single chair. Through this barriers the light inside floats as incense, as kisses of shadow and light embraced.

I cross-leg in the floor, the air brings a picture of the grass and weeds outside, the eternal conference of insects. I trace what air is doing inside, what it brings from outside. With effort I try to divert attention from the thoughts of ends.

When he enters, I notice only as he sits in the other corner, covered in a red drape adorned with fishes, worn as a shawl over his head, a round, bald head that is sun-dark, the eyebrows thick and horizontal on his brow-parallel long-vine resting lips, his eyes closed, and a wide nose controls airflow.

—Move the chair.

I see the chair and start my movements towards it, stop, hesitate: why? Why am I doing this? Why did he ask? Why am I obeying? And the inquisition makes me rapidly glimpse at him, but his eyes are still closed. I thus return to consider the chair and analyze it’s position, analyze the purpose of his order. I see one leg presses the purple drapes. I carefully move it without disturbing the curtain and reposition the chair.

—Why did you move the chair?

—Because you asked?

—But why did you doubt then?

—Because I wondered why you had ask.

—And why did I?

—Hmmm... I think because... It was on top of the curtain.

—And why is that a problem?

—Because that's the limit of space, and it cannot be touched, otherwise it could fall.

—Exactly, if that chair touches the curtain, and if the leg pulls at it and the curtain collapses, then space collapses… if the curtains are destroyed then the universe is destroyed.

And I believed him, for this space had been made by him, that curtain is what sustains it.

—You hear the command, you wonder why and then you act. Did you choose? And when did you choose? Did you choose to obey, to doubt or to act? Did I command or did I make a prophecy? Had I a servant of metal who followed every command, he would not be free. And yet an equal human could follow in every way… and be free. How is it so?

I could not answer, for I sat ever emptier in me and fuller in space.

—The metal man will move always the chair with no doubt and therefore always the same way. You'll move the chair again, but hear this first, this is the news I bring as they are also written: Christ has returned and he'll sit in that chair and just as you will move it, he'll sit in the place where you leave it.

He got up and left the room.

Time passed and I was still trembling when I was able to move and the curtain falls.

I continued the work, first as notes of it's notes, then a slow restructuring, planning the foundations with no material consideration of the effort it would require. In my mature years I finally arrived at the point where I could start the grand oeuvre. At last I had found joy in my destiny, and my costly sacrifices where now the garden of my silence. However, old age also brought limits and impositions on the flesh, and, with them, a clear vision of my mortal horizon; I would die before finishing. This realization freed me of time, reduced the zeal with which I previously pretended to conquer the cynical demands of the project. I went looking for your mother, even though I didn't know that yet. It was then that I met you. I know you saw me then with fear, which is only fair and natural and inevitable. My hope is that this letter, along with the other boxes, will let you know me better, judge me and then to continue.

Only until the first guest's arrival did I become aware of the layers of dust that had settled upon me, the house's uninhabited parts. We laughed, talked hours and the second guest arrived. Enthusiastic, stimulated by the social energy that seemed to bud a new world, we drank and our conversations enriched.

The third guest was the first I didn't know beforehand, she was proposed by the others. Receiving strangers started pressure testing my comfort but she was alluring and exciting enough to risk the invasion I felt. I was still asked permission for the 4th and 5th guests.

Maybe it was my nonchalant attitude that eventually made them think I was OK with them inviting indiscriminately and that my consent was a priory. At first I liked to give that appearance, it not only fronted self-confidence but it could be a fake it till it makes you kinda thing. Tried to convince myself to be that way, and it did work like that, I guess, until guest 9.

At the 10th guest I could do no more. Hoped (or tricked myself) that it was surely understood that ten were enough, that it was inconceivable inviting more than ten, that we we're cramping at 10. Then guest 11 arrived.

Everything changed... I realized that being on such good terms with everyone made me fear any sort of confrontation or denial. We all did our best to accommodate each other and really nobody was being a hindrance or obnoxious, something which might’ve pushed me to set limits... Still guest eleven, one after ten, the one too many arrived and... It was a quiet panic, something small like rabbit pounding in my chest, something I kept hidden and tried to appease with constant secret blandishments.

Plans to expand the house commenced. Someone knew a civil engineer that could be brought in to make more rooms. The works started soon after and more guests came in to lend hands and expertise. A new section was added in a few weeks but the space generated barely accommodated the people that came in. The mood changed with work schedules and constant construction noise.

There was barely any privacy as even I shared my room with others. One knew not solitude, even bathrooms offered no solace with the pressure of evergreen waiting lines. And that much was gone as renovations for public bathrooms began. The remodeling made navigating complicated, sections were closed, impromptu kitchens set up, porta-potties popped mycotically.

My room was cordoned. Grandma's ashes were in there (or had they been thrown?). The house (I stopped calling it mine, still called it a house for a while) was now alien; the rabbit grew, bulged and pounded outside.

A lot of faces where yet recognizable but now there were conversations in foreign languages in the halls. Information went arround, the underground works had begun. I was unsure of the relationship the edifice had with the outside, had it grown as a tower or sprawled atop the neighboring houses? In some feverish dreams (the constant relentless construction noised tortured dreams) sleeping in rooms that might've been built days ago, which might be demolished days from now, I the house expanded inwardly infinitely behind the immutable facade. Dreams with indistinguishable contours so that they blended in memory long corridors with doorless mouths yawn flickering light of screens, shadows of figures crouching, concrete aquatic in the bluish wash as trash tries to hide and rest comfortably, as couriers with impossible security and alacrity deliver food like Mercury's avatars.

I feigned composure, started becoming withdrawn, again, after I relinquished any hope of being recognized. I barely saw people I knew. Then I saw the rabbit, I think, or it's tracks and... no longer care about the guests (I use that word to make me laugh, but secretly, surreptitiously call them ghosts). I couldn't let them know my mistake nor my shame nor my secret. Maybe if I get it back, before more get out, before containment becomes impossible, then corridors expanding into roads I prowl sight low sweeping the concrete floors. I see tracks on the dust and discovered that all dust is ash. There are maps which I can't read and their signs are maps of their own, questions barren of answers, no longer distinguishing between fractured idioms or a single tongue structured maze-like in the image of the works, still I try to talk to them, I try to speak to them, I tell them, as they pass through the streets: This used to be my house...

It is perhaps the pleasure of going to a motel to go nowhere. The Limbo where one can wait for the message indefinitely, that message that forever seems to be in transit, about to arrive, snaking to find the right channel through the most unlikely couriers. I see everything and think: do you have it? Have you brought the message?

Drinking by the pool and loafing, time never seems so full. What seemed atomic and irreducible in waiting opens a realm of activities and possibilities. Everything reveals it's lazy essence to me. I see the highways, not anymore the systems of vectors in battle against it's physicality of mute gluttonous gravity, but a dark desert, web shaped. And what does this web trap? And where does this desert end and start? I'll go out and stand in the blacktop and enjoy not going anywhere but that single circular expanse.

People, humans come and never before do I see them with less judgement, with more flesh, souls momentarily aware of the mix of fate & flesh they where allotted, for a moment millimetrically peeking out of their perimeters. They all appear real & ghastly and I wouldn't have it otherwise, personally, as a ghost. And the staff! Most spectral of all, almost white wall, elementals of plaster, maybe fallen angels, remembering their previous natures of architecture and wings.

Some days I'll let the sun blast me in it's childish joy of destruction and come back to the darkness of the room and lay on the made up bed, the A.C. blasting and humming into me the memories of ancient cool cave labyrinths and cut time into time indefinitely.

Night's where you can enjoy the caesuras of dreams, the punctuation marks of sleep, waking several times to the rainfall of T.V. static with it's jagged sierras of black and snow illuminating the mountain ranges of limbs half covered by the moss of covers.

Sometimes a kid will look me staring into the horizon and ask "What are you doing mister?" "Oh, nothing at all!" I'll answer. And they won't understand because it's all they've ever done!

Most profit is to be had setting oneself outside, whether sitting on the pavement or in some auspiciously divined step in some cubical staircase or by axiom recline in a pool chair and watch the sky and learn from it to be eternal. See it's words form up at twilight and the crowds of it's immortal cities at night. I know it writes for me as it's clouds convolute and blush and yet what language is it? I go to the vending machine, get a snack or crack open a can and watch.

It is here that the temple of time opens up it's access tollbooths and I walk in and out of waiting empty spaces, of rooms, dark beasts with their skin on the inside and glimpse at the empty theater where all occurs. Ah, my architectural soul!

What pulls us from here? What hidden load-stones in our wills. Ah, maybe the message will not show in such a quiet place, or the codex of the language of the stars and clouds. But we are pulled.

The way out, of course, is not walking out of the premises of the motel but getting into the car, malingering in the parking lot, where it never sleeps, that portal you enter and everything becomes vector, the world of speed and direction, always going somewhere, never getting nowhere.

-

The rehearsal: human aping apes flail their limbs and crouch and serpent, flap arms and fin their legs in the inchoate movement that precedes body.

Explore the space! Let your body tell you where it wants to go! Then advance! Move in ways you have never moved before! Surprise yourself!

STOP! Don't move! Be perfectly still, and try to read what your body wants to do, where it wants to go! Slowly let that impulse take you and advance!

-

After the warm up exercises we lay exhausted on our mats, resting. The cold dry wind passed over me and for the first time I also let it pass over me, consenting to enjoy it, instantly altering my vision, no longer one from the inside defending a border but the interaction of bodies of which my own was only an actor. And I perceived how everything was transformed under this angle, the subtle smell of sweat and the pulsating muscles, the evil winds and other lurkers of this horror world, might all be mollified if only one where able to remain an impartial observer balancing on the tip of that membrane. How exciting is even death from that superior view! Victim and killer at the same time, wound and knife, deer and the steel impact of vehicles. This must be why God made evil.

-

Marie, what did you think about the scene?

Well, I kind of got the impression that Liz didn't exist, that she was dead.

Oh, really? Interesting, that's why I asked Nadia to actually sit at the chair, to give her flesh, I wanted her to have a presence.

Well… Actually, I gotta confess that two weeks ago… I had a friend also called Liz pass away. She was my age and uh, I guess that's why I pictured her dead...

Oh no, I'm so sorry to hear that!

And sometimes... when the play was going on, I thought I smelled the perfume she used to wear, I don't know if someone was passing on the street... It's just sometimes, death doesn't seem such a simple thing, we smell something and for a minute it convinces us that the dead are really alive.

Ah... It's interesting isn't it? It's a terrible play! Even if you're all alone, if it’s only you, we still need someone else in order to move, some conflict! Ghosts keep us alive. If they don't exist we make them, and then exist because of them! That the OTHER necessarily brings conflict but that conflict brings life! Movement! Drama is just action in greek, all movement is conflict...

Inaudibly:

What are we doing in stage if not necromancy? If not conjuring spirit into the drab dead air of the stage, conjuring the perfume of a dead young woman.

-

Liz, why won't you talk to me! Let's go the the graveyard where you can play your drum and I can sing! ... And that's it!

You don't get to cut! Only I get to cut! Why did you stop? Do you know why I'm scolding you?

I was in the flow and then I... Because I was afraid, and didn't want to continue the role, I felt insecure.

Exactly, it's as if you had said "I don't want to live anymore". And one doesn't get to choose that. It's like those Sessions with the therapist: "I'm thinking about killing myself..." You either kill yourself or you don't, suicidal people don't think about it, don't talk about it, they do it... That's the most important rule, you never give up. We don't get to say no, you have to play your role until the director says to, you don't get to stop the play, to peek outside the curtains of this world as in that alchemical drawing, which is why I also prohibit you all to touch the curtain! That's why we're here, to rehearse, to be prepared for when we want to say cut!

The hand horizontally swipes in front of the neck.

Looking at the others, for a minute it seems we all share an impossible unspoken subtext under which a covenant is being asserted. Rules are what we want to be true, convincing others to convince ourselves. All those thoughts I had this week, somehow seem mirrored right now in each of us. Staring at the window, at the closed leaves of the ficus tree, stitched together by that plague of tiny insects into little folded dumplings, protected from the outside world, it's frigid hostility, infesting life to become demiurges of their own wombs.

-

Walking back from the rehearsal a tree stops me. One of those sentences that life will trow at you and make you stop dumb trying to understand it's foreign language. All the elements previously mute which now attain meaning in the single instant of coherence that brought everything into syntax. The oyster turgid sky and the hostile wind that is folded and replicated in concrete, oh so below, the dark auto repair shops and that forbidden college made out of crystal, metal and the tree, yellowing with a vibrancy that does not speak of decay but of exuberance and joy in it's profligate display which doesn’t even feel alienated by the sea of blacktop and greedy forms of steel nor has it ever occurred to it to distinguish them from nature and itself. The instant of aesthetic revelation coexists with the freezing dread which beauty did not dispel or conquer. Why can't I partake in autumn's celebration of death? The cars wait bloodthirsty in the other side of the road. Would they be fast enough? Yellow then red, then green. All of us advance.