Tales translated by Ron Rodríguez and Aravind Adyanthaya

Prologue

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I met my friend Ron Rodríguez 25 years back in MSA gallery here in San Juan and I perfectly remember when he gave me his book “The captains that dogs aren’t” and his cassette “Repulsion for Reptiles”. Just by curiosity I wrote to Ron recently to see if he remembered me and I sent him links to find my short story book in Spanish and some of other books I have published recently with Edgardo Nieves Mieles. To my surprise he translated what I consider are some of my most recent and finest short stories with some of the older ones from the book. Thinking mostly in readers who know English but not Spanish, I decided to paste them all in this collection with details as to our friendship. Now I include here one translation by another friend, Aravind Adyanthaya, who did translate “The Medusa”.

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Literary Society of the Sun

By Jose Liboy Erba

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Anyone who has frequented one of our meetings will understand right away that we have not always been an organization that rewards literary talent.

Our origins date back to the last century, when our ancestors organized a society whose primary purpose was to give the whereabouts of people who had been lost during a hurricane or major disaster. Once a year we gather to give a literary prize to the person who best describes our purposes as a society or who provides us a narrative that best describes the real reason that brings us together in the present moment.?In general, the literary contestants do not explain why there is a poetry or story contest. Our contest is different in this sense, since it’s not based so much in the genre chosen by the participant as to the topic that he chooses to discuss, that is our prerogative. Also, there is another detail, we ourselves choose our guests, rather than submit a free competition to all. Almost always the person who wins the award is part of the jury for the next year, until finally accepted as a member of the society. In order for such a society to function, as it’s natural, it’s necessary for us to explain our origins. We will not invite a person, without further ado, just because we’ve been told that he writes well. The participants who compete have already made been eligible in advance, already, in a certain way, have won a prize for participating. What we are interested in is not the quality of the text, but the degree of verisimilitude which he can explain our purposes. We distinguish ourselves from other forums because our society was originally non-literary, but one that helped people who had forgotten who they were. Something that happened a lot during the immigration movements, the fires in the poor parts of the city; was the forgetting of one’s own identity, and a lot of people not knowing who they were, who had forgotten their own relatives, they found asylum among us. What purpose does a similar society have nowadays? That is precisely what we submit for competition, every year, more or less, at the same date. There are those who say we don’t matter anymore, that the reasons we joined in the past no longer exist today, but by the entries we received every year and the criticism of the literary heritage sectors, who consider us a minor prize, the reason?is that we have persevered to the present.

By everything else, we look like an ordinary literary society. Most of us members have already reached our senior years. We feign interest in young talent, the same as other societies. The one who can tell us a better story about ourselves, gathered in the middle of a Friday night, even if he doesn’t win a prize, will receive a warm welcome. We prefer, however, that someone will surprise us with a different version about ourselves as a society. Sometimes a person, who has spent many years courting us, may receive, in a pejorative way, an honorable mention, but certainly not one of the prizes.?Those who come see us during an award ceremony will be surprised to see that we are always surrounded by small children, and that they are not always our children. There are occasions in which we go to the beach to discuss the award we are going to grant, and discuss weather that person deserves the award in light of ourselves. Unlike other societies maybe we aren’t an authority on literature, other than the experience of living from day to day. Concerning other people, we usually know everything in other times. Because of that, we usually award stories, anecdotes about natural disasters. Last year someone won, as far as I remember, a prize for an essay on the way people forget during a grand fire. Says the essayist: “One imagines, during a great fire, people burned and firefighters rushing from one side to another, over the widespread scorching, but one never imagines that a person would forget their name and not know their true activity as a result of the same disaster. On such a person, one could tell a story that could remind the society of its original purposes. The imagination has much to see at the time of classifying any disaster. If it’s a fire we see the burned one. If a tidal wave, people drowned on the beach, fish from the sea dead on the shore, and no one deigns to gather them to eat. However, when that happens in the imagination of the people, we know that the disaster has been so great as to move us like the original society that we were. We to perpetuate ourselves towards the future, content ourselves with some mythical forms that are native to the original disaster from which we came.?We can imagine some victims or heroes that saved them, but in modern times we have never encountered, as far as I know, an enormity similar to one of Oedipus, which during the disaster in Greece forgot that he was the son of kings, became ignorant of his legitimate descent to the Greek throne with his conduct.?We do not see Oedipus but a case of misplaced identity. We could say that during the last century we were active, as writers and essayists, when thousands of displacements in this area threatened people with an air of tragedy. We did stories about the father, the mother and son because those institutions seemed to be undermined by displacement and slavery.?Now, as a literary society, we don’t know to what extent is has lost its own identity. We keep functioning as a society that rewards small anecdotes, to know until what point that individuals ignore what is their true ancestry, etc. I, on that, have something to say by way of essay.”

Another issue that seems to me legitimate to discuss is our position regarding apocryphal stories. The reader would be greatly surprised if he discovered that the vast majority of the stories relating to disasters, which occasionally appear in magazines, in which a person is saved from a snowfall or mudslide, prove to be false in general. Remember that there are insurance companies by means of, at least, when it comes to mudslides or fires. What we call the subculture of the victim, which last century had a flourishing underground economy, an underground that took advantage of the poor communications of the time, was one of the principal topics, now lost in the modern era, of the humorous works of Mark Twain. Removed today from the rivers, we lose the “pathos” of the essential charlatanism that surrounded the great enormities of history. Societies such as ours existed in spite of this. To give just one example, think of the insurance charged by a slave ship on a load dropped on the sea, enough motivation to give rise to a thousand sumptuary narrations of the vessel. As well as there is a classical world, which we refer to by myths, exists a modernity that we access through anticipations. I can’t tell with total accuracy when we were born as a society, but having existed in the times when that ship was sunk, we would have awarded a narration that appeared immediately an attempt was made to collect the insurance, written by a freedman whom his henchmen called pejoratively King of Sweden. This man not only discovered the fraud, already being an abolitionist in England, he wrote a detailed chronicle of the traffic to expose the thousand they said to have disembarked the sunken vessel. We lose the flavor of the English underworld that lived by usurping identities, pretending to be drowned, to collect perks from overseas. That is what Twain meant, for example, when he said that Walter Scott embodied in his writings the worst of the American south. First of all, the celebration of the underworld, which lived no only of a continuous usurpation of foreign identities. For him, the English people resisted by means of illegality in all its facets. The corrupt son of a vicar resembling?scum as a smuggler, reinvigorated the fanatical protestant when he stole his daughter. No one like Twain to denounce this celebration of crime, that today we don’t hear discussed except superficially as a footnote, precisely because the margins appear to be the origins of the true criticism, or modernity. Don’t be surprised, if interested in our activities, when we project ourselves to the world as a species of something absurd. The fraud is discovered in the tone, less than the content. Look, a man with materials such as Scott, the narrative resources, could have perfectly told the truth. If today it seems to many that criminality is a popular form, that we owe to Scott. It’s very modern to say that today we are not what we once were. If I had started in earnest, as I am speaking now, perhaps we could arrive at the end.

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Translated by Ron Rodriguez?2015

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I Went Out To Buy…

By Jose Liboy Erba

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I went out to buy some cigarettes at the shopping center.

In the avenue, I started humming a Brazilian tune and between some bushes, a boy stepped toward me. He wanted to see me and I let him catch up. I was dressed in black under a burning sun with some shoes that I have applied an opening involuntarily revealing the pinky and ring toes.

That boy reached me and asked me for the time showing me the New Testament. He was dressed in shirt with small hearts and had an extremely beautiful face. He knew that I would come by. And I also knew that he would arrive.

Other men started crossing my path from many other places. They would reach me, show me their weapons and move on. Some were ragged and others very threatening.

It was like surveying different types of men. We were all dirty and poor. We were all like a perplexity that was cordial at the same time. There was a willingness to express ourselves, without really knowing how.

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Translated by Ron Rodriguez?2015

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The Horse

By Jose Manuel Liboy

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I always walk by foot, from the church where I preach to the house where I live. I never drive an auto and everybody knows that I prefer to walk. Never, however, have I told the story that explains why I’m always on foot. Once I had a car, when I lived and preached in Maricao, where some of my daughters were born. I bought an automobile and took out a driver’s license, but had problems with the car and stopped driving at once. I bought be an old horse and preferred to go on horseback to preach to my brothers, although the whole world travelled by car. One night, when I mounted the horse to go to church, the animal did not want to keep walking even though I pulled on the stirrups with force.

-I can’t see anything.-I told myself. –The night is without stars and neither can the town lights be seen. To think of how far I am from my wife and my daughters. When these things happen to me, it doesn’t seem like I’m married. The horse doesn’t want to move either. But if I remained blind in this car it would be worse than remaining blind with this partner.

At dawn, because I kept mounting the animal the whole night, I discovered that the animal had stopped before a precipice. The night did not let me see that I was on the edge of a gorge. If the animal had kept going, I wouldn’t be able to tell my daughters this story. I prefer to walk since then. The Catholics of the town of Isabella see me coming and going on foot and don’t say anything. My stories only interest my daughters who always tell them to my grandchildren.

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Translated by Ron Rodriguez?2015

Rio Piedras Cinema

by Jose Liboy Erba

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I have the mania to dwell without reason in front of the Santa Rita cinemas. The billboard makes an eternal homage to lovers: a woman showing off a shiny thigh with a sawed off shotgun in her right hand, three Chinese avengers, a sweating unicorn. I don’t believe these things will do any real harm to people. But you have to stay in love. And since love leaves one without knowing what to do, there isn’t much problem. They can cut an Arab’s throat; they can shoot at each other all they want. I haven’t come as far as to vilify the billboard. The contempt of violence is the first indication that one has become violent.

I stand in front of the cinema, but I don’t enter the lounge. Going to the cinema by oneself is no fun. One goes to the cinema when there is no other choice. That doesn’t mean that the cinema will soon disappear, on the contrary, every day there are fewer remedies for problems. That doesn’t mean that there will be more cinema. Since the cinema belongs to lovers and lovers are not many, although everyone knows that the remedies are running out. If there was a second universal deluge, God would command Noah to build a cinema house. Pairs of lovers would arrive by their own account. In fact, I believe that if God were to choose the billboard for that antediluvian room, he would surely choose the?most sordid and terrible films, that are in the end the ones one likes when one feels the heat of a young woman. The good films are things of suicides. They are tender and compassionate like soup for the terminally ill.

I would find myself in this terminal tenderness. In the evenings they were showing sensitive films. I delighted in them, I was pleased to understand them. I was converted into a noble soul. But one morning I decided to throw myself to the beach.

The sea appeared to me strangely attractive. I stayed in the sand and fell asleep. I didn’t notice but I was behaving like a suicide. Fortunately, the pain of my flesh is stronger than my whims. My destiny is more similar to that of Paris, which was a dilettante, when love wasn’t conducive.?

So ultimately, I left the beach with ugly sunburn. I learned that I was mistreating myself. All the time, I was mistreating myself. To be a noble soul couldn’t be my business. I was a shameless one, checking out women’s butts. I spent several days without sleep. I wrote an uplifting parable, my skin cracked and started to fall out.?I started peeling my skin with the joy of a lizard.

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Translated by Ron Rodriguez?2015

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The Jamaican Girl

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The passionate portrait of Clifford was in front of the child. Rare as they portrayed it as a defeated military, and the elegant bearing of the courtier didn’t really give the idea that he suffered from diarrhea in San Juan. That was sometime in the seventies and the era of the twin plants of Hernandez Colon. At that time the history of the Caribbean was written by the Americans and the Columbians. He didn’t understand the need for so much neutrality between the islands when the villains were the English like Drake or Budoino Enrico, the Dutch. The child looked at the portrait with some perplexity but gave no mind to the matter. He accepted, like any child, anything the books said. The Spanish ones were ok. They spoke about Lezama with his cup of coffee, the baroque writers. But when it came to the History, everything was strange. And however, he had to accept it all. They were going to put the twin plants in Jamaica and the child had no idea what the twin plants were, nor did he ever know it. However, when he came to study at the university, a girl appeared to him who used the proper name of his nearest relative. And this, or course, he didn’t understand at once. He remained absorbed with the Caribbean stories of Garcia Marquez. The Caribbean didn’t have a more positive defender. And all of that with the idea that his books sold by the thousands everywhere, made it extremely attractive.

Of Drake just a few images, portrayed with his silver armor. Of Enrico some things, the portrait that is in the library, where you can see the soldiers loading the arcs. That portrait is of Enrico. What would remain in the library? No idea. He continued walking with her, with the girl who used the name of his relative.He went with her from here to there, without knowing what to do. He sat her in the back on the car, and days later he took her by the hand. Since she used the same name as his relative, he didn’t know if he should be her boyfriend or not. And the writers of Latin America were getting worse. Borges came, Vargas Llosa came, who promised to write the History of the Goat, still not written then. But the real history of the Caribbean, he really didn’t know. Now they have reviewed it. Clifford didn’t lose in?the eighteenth century, but girls with the physical type in Clifford’s portrait studied with him in the faculty of sciences. If he lost, why are there so many English type girls throughout all these parts??The one with him was of the Jamaican type, black although well fed and smooth, not sallow like the Puerto Rican ones.

And naturally he thought of writing a story. That always happened to him. He wrote stories about worms, about all types of animals. Fables, stories, poems. He gave them to the girls of the Clifford type for them to read. The Jamaican was still with him, and he even moved in with her to make purchases at the Cash and Carry at Domingo Dominguez, now defunct. Tremendous large wholesale food store. The Jamaican girl came and went from the apartment, with no idea of what they were going to do, if they were going to marry, because of the problem of assuming another identity. He assumed that her relative was aware, but he didn’t know if he was going to marry her. The Jamaican girl also didn’t know what the twin plants were. She didn’t even know that she was Jamaican.

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Then a relative of his cousin approached him. The boy had a literary magazine in stencil, which mainly published poems, but through a girl named Amarilis, wife of the owner of the Paradise cinema, began trying to collaborate with poems. The first one sent, rejected, was a heroic poem about Bach’s music. Then he began sending stories and those were published. Since the head of the writers was the cousin of his relative, it became difficult for him to explain to the writers why he ran around with a girl who had the same name as the chief’s cousin. Soon and probably for the same reason, the head of the writers to their stories to the weekly pro-independence. Surely, with the idea of compromise, now that he was with this girl who surely managed his studies. Fortunately, he knew the head of the weekly, because he had met him at an advertising agency.

His life with the girl from Jamaican could not keep on being “this no man’s land”.?Something would have to be resolved, a resolution should be taken as soon as possible, so he married her even though she used the name of his relative. His brief relationship with her ended almost immediately, but it was good that he marry her and resolve the problem in favor of his relative.

II

They say that you never make a portrait of a defeated military. From his grandfather who had lost a business because he was pro-independence, there was, however, a big portrait in his house. So the portrait of Clifford, who in reality was a successful soldier in 1605, was associated with a military defeat of 1797. That soldier was Jamaican and a portrait had never been made of him. But the habit of seeing a portrait of a grandfather who had lost politically, made him think that Clifford was the loser. So when he saw the daughter of his relative in Trujillo Alto, that was the Clifford type, like the girls from Utuao, it didn’t bother him the least. Of course he was no longer with the Jamaican girl. He spoke with the daughter of his relative and explained what happened.

“Now you know the truth.” He told her. “ But why did you look for me?”

The daughter of his relative looked at him.

“I want to get married. I haven’t been able to marry.” She told him.

He put his hand on her forehead and noticed that the girl had a fever. He remembered the Jamaican girl told him that they were together to do a good deed then everything happened. Someone in the laboratory went to look for the daughter of his relative. The girl soon had a son, and this had the virtue of lessening the carrier status of the Anopheles.

“Clifford lost the plaza with a fever.” He told her.

“No”, she told him, “ He won the plaza in 1605, the plaza that was much coveted by Drake, but he went home with the dengue.” The soldier that you thought had lost, was in reality a man who like I, had won much, much…You should never win so much.

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Translated by Ron Rodriguez?2015

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The Lover of the Scorpion

By Jose Liboy Erba

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Communications by radio were suspended, due to censorship obligated by security reasons, now that a war had been unleashed outside my work area. It had been a long time since I passed through that place, which in fact had been unlucky for me, from the point of romance more than anything. The girlfriend of my cousin, who was my assistant professor, was the only person who missed me. At the new university, where she was studying literature and not science, I found her on the verge of moving to a lodging. My father, in the new country, was tired and almost ill, subdued. Didn’t want to help me to continue studying, nor continue living with people of his age. The dean of the Faculty of Sciences, who was a physicist the same age as my father, neither wanted to keep mentoring my studies. I tuned in a radio station from the country where I had lived as a child, and where I became a professor of the Lancaster system, and of course, couldn’t find anything. Neither music, nor commentaries, or announcers. The war that had been unleashed in those territories didn’t let me know anything about those people. My cousin, the assistant, had arranged to transport his girlfriend to the University. Then, yes, of course, I moved in with her to an apartment in the University community because she felt alone in the lodging. She was with me, even though she wasn’t my girlfriend, but my cousins, and didn’t want me to be alone because she missed me. Of course, being with her wasn’t the best, but since she wouldn’t leave me I had to marry her since my cousin hadn’t married her when we were in the other country.

Since I wasn’t a math teacher, I wasn’t entitled to medical prescriptions, in order to send a message to my assistant. Message that said: Even though I’m with your girlfriend, don’t worry, there will be no children. A mathematics teacher, by only giving a few classes, could obtain the solution to transmit a chemical message, certainly not by talking on the radio, just like insects, who communicate chemically. A contraceptive test that I would do to this woman, who was with me for nostalgic reasons, could be that chemical message that mocked radio censorship. But to do this, since it’s natural, I had to marry her. I would get the recipe if I married her. Something certainly paradoxical, but necessary, since I had to understand that the man on the other side was left without a woman. It was an intelligent move that a lot of academics whom I was with now were making.

What is certain is that I now appeared to be publicly married to my assistant’s girlfriend, although the marriage gave me the right to use the chemical by which I could communicate. If I had been a math teacher, I wouldn’t have to get involved in this production, which was an undesired marriage with my friend’s girlfriend. But I could send a message to my friend through the clinic, now that I used the formula, even though we now appeared to be married. After I managed to send him a message in a country at war, I separated from his girlfriend and found a way for us to get divorced. It’s true that now it would be difficult for me to get really married, but since I was committed to my old job with people whom I had been with, I had to endure this dilemma. I didn’t know, however, if the message to my cousin had reached its destination. What is certain is that I couldn’t marry again, and I spent many years alone.

An entomologist, or specialist in the lives of insects, became interested in me. The sting of the scorpion, in its early infancy, not only had laid the bases of his vocation with these forms of loss, the sting, terrible by itself, had obstructed the fallopian tubes with its hemorrhage. This woman, of course, looked for me when I got divorced from my cousin’s girlfriend. By that time I wasn’t a college student and my past as a teacher of the Lancaster system was a forgotten thing, But in spite of everything, she came looking for me at my parents’ house. She came from the other side also, from that country that was still at war with this one, and she justified being with me the obstruction that she was enduring.

“When you were a teacher in my country, I was too poor to be your student”, she told me. “A scorpion stung me now you see how I am.”

“What’s important is that you were the one who received the message.” I told her. “You already know that I didn’t have any children with my cousin’s girlfriend, the one that the people in your country loved so much. To me never, never to a teacher of a country as poor as yours, but that is not accustomed to poverty. You, in the past, were not poor, and that is what has you in this one, which was always poor. However, your problem has a solution. There is a strain of stem cells from this couple, that of my assistant and his girlfriend. If you let me know if you want them, your obstruction will disappear. And perhaps you will no longer be the lover of the scorpion that stung you. “

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II

A few years later, my cousin’s girlfriend, the woman whom I was dramatically married to, returned to look for me at my parent’s house. She arrived at my parent’s house pregnant. I took care of her until she had the baby, who was the same as my assistant, but with a curious detail. It didn’t resemble the mother, his girlfriend, but the entomologist.

“It doesn’t resemble you.” I told her. “It resembles my cousin, but not you. But to the woman of that country.”

“I accept what you suggested.” She told me. “I accept the strain of my boyfriend and I. Although as you can see, it didn’t have it. He returned to that place right away, after that the clinic injected the cells.”

“With her and the insects is something serious. The scorpion remembers her as if he was her boyfriend.” I replied.

“What does that poor insect want to say?” she asked me.

“It isn’t bad.” I told her. “Interpret it as you like; the case is that you’re here.”

“He is their son.” She told me. “But I’m never going to leave you.”

I couldn’t understand why my cousin’s girlfriend would continue with me. Forgotten issue, in any case. But she reminded me that the Lancaster system had vaccinated me to give classes in that country.

“One wants to avoid the stings, but one cannot prevent poverty from rebounding. There are no longer scorpions in the schools, but that couldn’t prevent you from being operated on and vaccinated. You were just like the entomologist, with the threat of a sting. That’s why, if you notice, there’s no one who knows if you have children or don’t have children. I was with you all this time because you had forgotten that you were a teacher with the system. That’s why I didn’t leave you. “

“Of course.” I told her. “England is a swarm. I had forgotten that I was a teacher in your system. “

Many years later I read a novel on entomology. The insects were beginning to gain importance in the country that received me and I recalled that an actor had spoken to me about the new novels that were being published. Only that the authors, like the English actors, were rapidly dying and leaving their unfinished works. I remembered the young woman who came to see me because she received the message that we sent. It wasn’t the same as speaking with my old assistant, who had disappeared in the enemy country. Not knowing what to do with his girlfriend and his son, who was also the son of the entomologist, I dedicated myself to wandering the commercial centers with a calm that was always alert, in wait for better romantic luck, for sure, but without resentment or pain because of the past. Hoping that someone should come by perhaps, taking a ride from my home, my days were consumed without major mishaps. The insects were a thing of the past, but I recalled them with sympathy. Sometimes, at the traffic lights, when the ants would climb my shoes, I felt strangely happy and nostalgic.

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Translated by Ron Rodriguez2015

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Every time you leave me better

By Jose Liboy Erba

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The night was sinking in its white marasmus with the taste of laundry soap. I found myself in a type of fortress. I learned that I could do anything I wanted and I remembered the monastery of Telema, where the only rule was that. The only problem was that I arrived there with no desires. I was empty of desires. I didn’t want anything. The place was similar to a frontier post. There was only a monastery and a gas and motorcycle station. And the night was plummeting without any remedy.

My friend told me there was no way to leave that night. If I wanted to return to the house that night I would have to cross the desert on foot or let one of those monks take me to my house. Under no circumstance would I let them know where I lived. It was evident they were also afraid of me. Not because we were different. But on the contrary and perhaps, because of that, most seriously, we resembled. What disturbed me was the intensity in which we resembled each other.

My physique was identical to those monks, my expressions and my experiences the same. Only in my case, everything was more serious. Time weighed on me much more. It fell on me in a ruthless manner and I didn’t know who to prevent it.

My friend told them that I was from the other side of the desert. I told them certain stories that they found curious and they were scandalized that someone like them was the subject of certain events. At those who were from the other side of the desert, my friend introduced me later on, but told them that I was from this other side. I was comforted that my friend was looking out for me, but he also made very clear that there wasn’t anything original about my problem. The time did not fall on me because I came from a certain place. I didn’t understand for what purpose my friend brought me to this monastery.

“I would like you to meet these people.” he told me.?We should share the night with them.

“I’m noticing that they’re afraid of me. “I told him. “I can’t and maybe I shouldn’t, do anything so they won’t fear me.”

“We will spend the night in white.” my friend told me. “They are afraid of me also.”

Various times I intended to leave by foot through the desert, but my friend went after me.

“You can’t leave yet.” he would say.

“But what is it that should happen?” I would ask. “There is nothing to do now. These people have no salvation.”

“You need to have more patience.” he said. “I know that we find the weight of time unbearable, but this is not the moment. You have to stay here.”

We entered the monastery and we sat in a bar. The ambience was mildly like a whorehouse. The songs were old melodies of the dances that were held in the porches many years ago.?Some of the monks would be the bartenders while others would be the drinkers. The women were infected with good customs and it was evident that they were well paid to remain ill. I was able to notice there was one with the weight of time upon her. She was there with an irrational presence. She was startled by what she was seeing.

Since I was sitting in the bar, she went to the other side of the counter to stir a mountain of ice with a plow. Naturally, it didn’t take long for her to stand in front of me in order to observe me. Her smile was both warm and lethargic but without any sadness, that we would never see each other again. Knowing is always an elaborate form of departure. My friend came at that moment and took me outside.

“There is a woman who just said goodbye to me. “ I told him. “She can’t spend much more time here.”

“We still can’t leave. “he told me. “Soon I will lose myself in the unconscious. So you will be alone. Don’t pay attention to me from now on. “????

“That woman’s smile left me frozen.” I told him. “I saw she was happy that I existed.”

“Watch were she goes.” my friend told me. “We will not see that girl again.”

“Then you also noticed?” I asked him.

From that moment on, the night began to fall with a really perverse gravity. My friend was converted into a star of flesh. I found myself totally alone. I saw that his face was slowly turning into a coin. I still couldn’t understand the reasons that provoked the women to leave. They approached me in order to say goodbye. And?not because they were going to die. Ultimately they didn’t leave but to say goodbye to the whole world, like if the world was converting into a graduation ball. They were telling me goodbye in the roads, in the bars and in the streets; sweet farewells, inexplicable and vehement.

I entered one of the other bars of that monastery. The people were dancing with a very sad serenity. A very pretty woman was seated at a table with two dwarves. With a very respectful joy she called me for a moment to her table.

“Now you can go. “ she told me. “Every time you see me from now on, you’ll now that your work has ended and you can go. I am the ballerina that appears at the end of the night.”

The dwarves smiled at me affably and the ballerina decided to go dance with one of them. Her smile and her eyes didn’t signify anything. I walked through the desert all night with a tranquil and serene step. A month later knowing that some women exist so for me to bid them goodbye, I found one that was in a business?and wanted to tell me goodbye. The weight of time fell over me. I knew that the sensation was due to the strange departure. The smile was tender, like always.

“Of course, why not.” I murmured. “Goodbye, goodbye. “

Being an older woman, her loud laugh turned the atmosphere yellow. The friend who was with her jumped and ran to the bathroom.?I calmly agreed and immediately left the place. Some of my friends saw me in the street and honked the horn at me so I would return to the place. We entered and the woman of the farewells said goodbye to me again with a smile.

“But, why not.” I told her. “Goodbye, dammit. But I had just finished bidding farewell. Goodbye, goodbye. “

In a table that was in the background, the ballerina with a circus troupe where she worked. My friends were with me and went there. The ballerina looked at me with the same pretty smile. My friends had brought me to her. We became silent for a moment.

“I told you that I’m the ballerina of the end of the night. “she insisted.

“Every time you leave me better. Now go. “

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The good side of the bed

By Jose Manuel Liboy

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Today I got up on the good side of the bed. I was able to read some of my breviary, which is an old book of stories that I wrote in the past.?When I wake up wrong I can't read or write anything and life not worth living. But today I am happy.?I was walking a few blocks to the shopping center, where I pick up cigarette butts to smoke. For some time I have no money to buy cigarettes, and my life is to wander in search of cigarette butts.?To do this I must have at least a little money for the matches. Whoever saw me out there cannot imagine that I have published books of stories and that I’ve been given awards for writing them.

?But this morning I am happy. I have started to write, and I think that in the future will I be able to print what I'm writing now.?I always imagine that I have no children, but apparently I have one now studying in the University. I prefer to imagine that I have a girlfriend. Any blonde that I see on TV will do just so I can imagine that I go out with her once in a while. Although in reality I haven’t gone out from here for many years now. If I told you that I celebrate this little life, I’d be writing as a man of letters and I really wouldn't like this very much. The truth is that I don’t celebrate this life.

Then it is necessary that I pay attention to my mother and write a story for children. They say that publishers will publish them, but I doubt it. Gone is almost the whole world of books today that nowadays is neither bad nor good. I remember when the mother of the boy who they say is my son, an editor, told me that the world of books had fallen into the hands of the mentally retarded. I didn’t realize, since I actually never part of the publishing world when it was a normal literary world. Today it really doesn't matter. My book of stories is a treasure.

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What is it really about? I don’t know. I have lost almost everything. If a world collapsed in the past, I wouldn’t be able to say. If they became old, I don’t know either. Whether they are friends or not, I ignore it. Sometimes I wake up well, like today. I know because I can read my breviary. But other mornings life me weary, and I can’t do anything. What happens to my friend? Did she not think that the world of books would fall like any other? They are illusions. Illusions don't last long. It happens to me when I read my book of stories. It can get my hopes up for a while. But it doesn’t even bring me memories. All the recollections disappear. Actually it doesn't matter.

The worst is when I’m weary. Then I read the others. The pedantry of a professor, the stupidity of a dilettante. It is bad when I wake up badly. But when I wake up well, like today, I mainly occupy myself with my books. Then I feel much better.

At the moment no story comes to my mind. I simply take notes of my states of mind. I forget to the scoundrel. I call some people through the cell phone. The cell excites me a bit, I feel like Batman calling Robin. But this illusion also lasts little. You have to take into consideration that I’m a person of a certain age, and school doesn’t make any sense to me. But aside from all this, this is a story I plan to write.

At first, nobody talked to me. No one told me stories. Only my father told me some stories about his people. My favorite story was the arrest and premature death of my grandfather.?The environment around us was nothing special.?Just an old house, my grandmother’s, which had a lot of value.?But that was enough. Some of these stories I remember,?but in fact already nothing.?It occurred to me to write what I remembered. That was all. From there I took out my breviary, which is that I read every day in the morning. Then I forgot everything.

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Sometimes I thought that people were bad. I was surrounded by bad people and believed that it was why no one spoke to me. The only person who was speaking with me was my father, cautiously. He stressed much the case of the premature death of my grandfather, and in the history of the arrest by the Government. But it’s very little what I know about that era.?

Yes it’s true that the abnormal ones occupied everything mysteriously.?The abnormal ones were left with the publishing houses, with the Government, with the universities. That’s nothing special; I imagine that is what was expected.

I have seen some pictures of Facebook in which I appear portrayed with a beautiful poet, but nothing.?In the photo my name appears.?It doesn't like I was ever a writer, but it doesn't matter. I’ve had to return to this text. I will continue here.?Today is another day; I went out as always to pick up cigarette butts. I haven't been employed for an eternity.?I'm thinking of writing a good story again, to see if I completely recuperate.?But nothing matters now. I'll have to print these notes someday. I expect to recover, of course.?The last book I wrote I wasn't even paid for it.??I have no wife or children.?I haven’t been able to do anything.

II

I'm starting to write again.?I can't remember many things, but I’m hoping that it will all start to flutter in my mind.?Now for the moment I am thinking of Tony Bicycle, a character on which I could write a story in the past and who's part of my childhood.?The truth is that with so many passionate stories it's almost a miracle that I have married.?But I only had one wife.?They always speak to me about Nayda, a computer programmer that went away to Argentina.?I wanted to know about computers through her, but now I only know about biotechnology or embryology.?Apart from this I don't know that much.

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My grandmother told me to not marry Nayda.?I did it when I went to the University I wasn't her friend.?When my paternal grandmother died, the family of my maternal grandparents tried to marry me with Nayda.?When I went to the apartment where I was going to see her, she wasn't there. A woman who replaced her used her name.?It was a rather complicated time.?From there I became the father of a child.?Now I know almost nothing.?I lose my memory.?I forget the words, the books are like the stones of the river.?I try to find out what happened, but there is little information in the Internet.?Only some of my juvenile stories appear.

I try to remember the past.?I would write many stories about my childhood, if I could remember what happened.?I just remember my paternal grandmother and the house of my maternal grandparents in Arecibo. I find it interesting that there is so little information on the Internet about my stories. I remained the author of only one book. But at least I like to write.?The current era is peaceful, but almost never nothing happens.?People disappear, I see few people actually.?I have dreams that I forget right away, and I can't tell the same stories than before.?Everything has been emptying little by little.

I marvel that I can hardly write.?I can't do a diary, so few things that happen to me, but life is almost always peaceful.?I picked up this tale, for example, after reading my old stories. Everything brings me a series of memories, and now I'm about to get a job as a translator.?The story is curious. It’s a teacher who had to stop teaching because she lost the respect in ninth grade.?A boy was going and to celebrate his birthday and planted the cake in her face. He had to leave school, naturally, but the teacher also had to leave school.?Now almost thirty years later my mother talks to her because she's a translator, and she may be able to help me get a job.?But she doesn't forget that I was in the room where she lost the respect.?It struck me of when I went to my father's funeral, where I told her that I was writing a master's thesis on birth control.

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To write by way of a diary would be ideal. Now I am pasting everything in the same text, since in fact everything is the same.?I can't write stories anymore; it must be because of age.?Now it's all about what happens to me because of old age.?I have forgotten many of the books I read as a youngster and prefer to read articles from the Encyclopedia Britannica, which a cousin gave me. These notes will not be a big thing in the future, but I do them so I won't lose the habit of writing.

III

I'm writing again.?I feel good, but I don't know when this is going to end. I have now a new computer. I'm doing well, but nothing happens.?If I could spin a story I would be happy, but for now nothing. The new computer has Word. The previous one had no Word. I'm here writing these stories. The word processor had already been damaged.?I want to take it easy with this computer so it lasts me.?It seems like a toy. Short stories. Delicate machine.?Now everything pleases me.?I think I'll write a New story.

I went out to find cigarette butts, as always.?The work I did in the past is a forgotten thing, so I can't do anything new. The new computer is a marvel. It’s simpler than the previous one, but I feel fine.?I can't do anything new for now.?I take these notes to forget.?Tomorrow I have to renew the tag, and it's another endless line.?I feel some satisfaction as in the past.?The keyboard is easy and I have forgotten my dreams.

?I'm still writing through habit, although already there's nothing to tell me that what I do has value, although the literary critics have disappeared from my life and old age is solitary.?Because when you think about it, literature is a matter for children.?However, I believe that someone will read these writings of old age.?There's no problem, I believe that I'll recover everything.

I paste texts one on top of the other.?I will read through habit, although I don't like to read anything now.?I will say that old age is different.?In fact, nothing has changed.?What I remember is that I was a good student, respectful and porfriendly.

The other day my mother entered the room so I could take her to the Church, since can barely drive the car.?She can't find where the lights turn on and naturally, I have to take her there, because nothing can be done so she can drive at night.?I think about what happened to the mother of the child that disrespected the teacher.?Although this problem may not seem relevant, what is certain is that now the teacher feels nostalgia for those years and speaks with my mother all the time in the church about that memorable occasion in which he planted the cake birthday in her face. I thought she would forget it, but although it seems incredible she feels guilty over the incident.?In fact, the school is closed for these and other things that happened in the past. Only the church is open and everything looks funny and desolate.?Really, it seems incredible that she hasn't forgotten it.

It's partly my fault that she hasn't forgotten it, well I not marry the daughter of the child that disrespected her.?Many years have passed and the daughter of the boy is now a marriageable woman.?The mother had hoped that perhaps I marry her, but instead brought the son of my ex-wife with the woman who used to accompany me in Trujillo Alto. Certainly, the teacher noticed that I did not marry the girl of the disrespectful one and now the nostalgia begins.

?What is oblivion? What is nostalgia??My dear teacher doesn't want to lose me for anything in the world and the truth is that I can't go away.?Remembering is everything.?This breviary will also be printed.?The truth is that it amuses me. I remember everything, teacher.?It's incredible that I did not marry the daughter of the boy.?And she was, as you might expect, a very beautiful woman.

Another thing I remember from the time that they lost respect for my teacher is what we read in the classroom. We read Marianela de Pérez Galdós, who speaks well about the humble people and badly about the people of the upper class.?I say this because after so many turns in life, after translations of Kafka to the Spanish, my life turned out to be the same. Kafka in our language sympathizes with those above, but in English is a Spanish novelist of the Regency.?This happened to me a lot at school. History was upside down.?They told us, for example, that Ana Bolena was courted by Henry VIII, when she was actually a moneylender for the democratic Queen Isabel.?We were told that Juana, who also owed him, was crazy when he paid off her debt with the Germans, that's why Philip was there for a while.?We were told that the Spaniards were the bad guys and the English the good ones, but in my teacher’s class we were readers of the Regency, which speaks well of the Spanish people.?I believe that’s why they lost respect for my teacher.?After many turns in life, I've finished reading novels of the Regency in English, as Kafka in English spoke of Castilians in Germany, which is historically true.?Max Brod did him a favor, because he arranged it carefully.?Kafka was elitist and Spanish translations are faithful to the bourgeoisie.?Brod, however, converts it to a writer familiar to me, Perez Galdos.

IV

As much as I think I can't imagine why they lost the respect.?Clearly, the boy was mentally retarded and it is precisely one of those who have inherited the world of the publishing houses.?I therefore imagine that all this will not be published until the world is normalized.?The teacher must be like Nayda, who had an assistant that used her name.?The woman who came to see me in my house was her assistant; she got married and in fact, went to see a lawyer to change her name because she owed money to the University.?That employee had a baby who they say is my son.?All this aroused some resentment for Nayda, who is no longer.?I think the teacher is like her.?She doesn't use her name, certain that no one says anything to her.?The retarded one however did what he did.

The disrespectful boy was boyfriend of a gossipy woman that I always liked.?She has a habit of holding funerals to the boyfriends she doesn't like, although he has a daughter with the disrespectful one, that's the girl of the one I did not marry.?She's still burying her suitors, and it's true that the disrespectful one is like Ulysses.?She has now held a burial to the former head of the union of employees of irrigation, and before one to the nephew of the former governor.?Important people have always been those that she buries, it seems that she takes them to another country.?She cannot denounce them openly as debtors of the Government, and celebrates these strange ceremonies to which my mother goes.?They say that she was going to be my wife, but they did not marry her with me because she has two mothers.?It must be that one of the two mothers did not agree with the idea that she marry me, because I have a hereditary defect.?She must suffer very much considering she already has that problem.?She's very friendly, because if she's the woman of the disrespectful one, she became a friend of my teacher over the years.?I directed a "press gang" of translators.?The abnormal husband was left with the only publishing house that exists in Puerto Rico today, and her daughter, of the one I didn't marry, by the way, is the editorial adviser of this company.?Everything has changed.?They are bosses of my teacher those that lacked the respect. Sometimes I think that the disrespect was a simulation.

It may be that someone is interested for me.?If I remember the woman from Tursi who accompanied me to see what was happening with Pales in the past, it is not for nothing.?Today she's far away, she had my son Joseph and we came to a hasty conclusion about the poet.?Suddenly we forgot everything.?And now I remember it because the weather vanes blew away the printer. Nothing to do.?Sudden epilogue took my story with the poet.?I wrote a story that they don't like.?They extinguished it at a distance.?But fortunately I have friends, and it was a thing of going to see them.?Whoever wants to have a printing business needs a good industrial machine.?It's good to see that the heavy machine endures everything.?The friend's printer is also a digital machine.?It has a wheel motor.?My printer was pitiful; it was analog like a belt drive turntable.?They took it away. I paid my friend to print the story that he doesn’t like. Of course, my friend kept it in his industrial computer. If I saved one or two stories of my old age it’s not because I appeared to be humble. Almost everything gets lost.?And it's true that although I'm going to participate in the contest, I'm not going to win the prize.

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My computer is delicate. Not everything can be saved forever.?But if I want something to be preserved I should go to Rio Piedras.?These notes may be lost in History, and that nobody will be interested in them. The problem has always been that couple who disrespected Sonia. They don't support it. I watch videos of how to save the printer, but it is useless.?I knew that I was going to lose it soon, so I'm writing these stories.

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Translated by Ron Rodriguez?2016

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The Medusa

by José Liboy Erba

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Sunken submarines are my passion. I always went to see them with a girl from school. We climbed down the hill to the beach and spent the afternoon looking at the old sunken submarine. One time, some fishermen came to tell me that my friend had gone swimming and that she had not returned to the shore. I became alarmed and immediately went to the submarine. I went into the water and, on the sand, at the bottom, I found an enormous jellyfish. In some way, the medusa spoke to my heart.?????

– It's me, Julio – she said. – I didn't know how to tell you. Sometimes I turn into a medusa. I cannot always stay on dry land with you. Sometimes I have to come to the bottom of the sea, here, close to the submarine that we like so much.

?????– Why do you turn into a medusa? – I asked. – I have always been your friend, and now I feel that there's a piece of your life that I cannot be part of.

?????– I'm not telling you this to make you feel that way- said my friend. Even though, when feelings are concerned, I'm like you. We're different from others in that way.?????I returned to the surface with a drowning sensation, for, at that time, the thought of spending my whole life with my friend near the submarine had crossed my mind. Little by little, I quieted down, as she became a girl again. Now we could even return to school. The fishermen were waiting for us at the square. They were relieved that I had accepted my friend, even knowing that she turned into a medusa. We celebrated and then each one went home.

?????The next day, my friend's parents came to my house. She had gone back to the sea and now she was not near the sunken submarine anymore.

?????– Our daughter is faraway today – they said. – She cannot come to school with you this morning. Nevertheless, since you love her, we want to tell you something so that you don't become disheartened by her absence. Like in the cases of people who cannot hear or talk, you will not always be able to understand our daughter. We, who love her, must develop a passion, that is, something else that we like a lot. If you like submarines, you must find out everything about them. Probably this one was already an old submarine. You must know everything, everything. Whatever you fancy, study it until you exhaust the subject matter.

?????– But, will my friend return? – I asked.

?????– Of course – they said. – And if she doesn't, you would always be able to remember her in her other way of being, near the things that you like the most.?

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?Translated by Aravind Adyanthaya Ramírez