The Names of the Things That Were There: Stories - Softcover

Skármeta, Antonio

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1635420768 ISBN 13: 9781635420760

Verlag: Other Press, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

A collection of the best short stories by the author of the unforgettable novel The Postman.

Each of the stories in this book is an extraordinary piece of literature. Love, youth, desire, and freedom, coupled with versatile prose, sensitivity, and a subtle irony that sometimes morphs into dark humor, confirm Antonio Skármeta’s position as one of the greatest storytellers in contemporary literature.

Juan Villoro has selected and written a prologue for this collection, originally published in five books that influenced an entire generation of writers and brought about a renewal of Latin American prose.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Antonio Skármeta is a Chilean author who wrote the novel that inspired the 1994 Academy Award-winning movie, Il Postino: The Postman. His fiction has received dozens of awards and has been translated into nearly thirty languages. In 2011 his novel The Days of the Rainbow (Other Press, 2013) won the prestigious Premio Iberoamericano Planeta-Casa de América de Narrativa. His play El Plebiscito was the basis for the Oscar-nominated film No.

Curtis Bauer is a poet and translator of prose and poetry from Spanish. He is the recipient of a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant and a Banff International Literary Translation Centre fellowship. His translation of Jeannette Clariond’s Image of Absence won the International Latino Book Award for Best Nonfiction Book Translation from Spanish to English. Bauer teaches creative writing and comparative literature at Texas Tech University.

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Ballad for a Fat Man  
 
When Juan Carlos joined our class, we were all happy because we needed a fat guy, our own gordo.
He showed up in the middle of our English class and our smile was as quick and crass as a rat. We were familiar with the feminoid hysterics of Mr. Smith (Smith and an English teacher!) and we sensed that our laughter couldn’t go beyond our diaphragms without it going unpunished: there it convulsed in our empty stomachs during that first hour of our morning class. If any laughter appeared on our faces it was a frown across the mouth or some insolent sparkle in our eyes.
Juan Carlos was accompanied by a small inspector, so thin he was insignificant, whose suits never covered his ankles or wrists. We decided that Inspector Soto bought his suits in the children’s section of Falabella to save money. It was precisely Soto who pushed Juan Carlos into the room, offering him to Mr. Smith like a cow taken to a butcher. At one point they were each holding one of his arms and the gordo was smiling at them blankly, turning back and forth like a fan every time they spoke to him.
“Valparaiso,” I heard him say suddenly.
From the back of the room I calculated that we would all be doing the math. Fifteen for Chile, ten for Colo-Colo, eight for Católica, two for Audax. If Gordo was for the Wanderers soccer club, he would practically be the official representative of the provinces and the Monday morning urinal discussions would take on an additional attraction. When Soto pointed to a bench in the middle row, we guessed that we’d have to turn our shoulders into the aisle so he’d be able to squeeze past us. He did it with a notebook in his hand and he wore that smile that made it seem like he was blushing at first and as the days passed we realized he was simply arrogant.
“I won the gordo, the lottery, the big money’s coming my way,” Dorfman, Blondie as we called him, whispered, his mouth watering as he watched the fat kid make his way forward.
Juan Carlos sat down and of course we all looked into the aisle to see how many centimeters of his butt cheek fell over the wood. Mr. Smith distracted our curiosity with his typical teacher attitude from a Yankee movie. He thought he was crazy Mr. Novak.
“I want you to meet our new friend,” he said in English, “Mr. Juan Carlos Osorio. Say hello to him, people.”
“Hi,” we exclaimed in a tone much shriller than our natural one.
“Juan Carlos,” Mr. Smith said, “do you want to tell your friends where you come from?”
Dorfman jabbed Gordo with his elbow, telling him to stand up.
Juan Carlos stood up with his eyes run over by a bunch of loose eyelashes that blinked from the floor to Smith, from Smith to the blackboard, from the blackboard to Smith, from Smith to the floor.
“I don’t speak English,” he muttered in a cavernous accent.
“Beg your pardon?” Mr. Smith projected, imitating the disparaging gesture of the old aristocrats in Alec Guinness movies.
He had walked over to the bench and with his neck craned he rummaged flirtatiously through the fat guy’s notebook.
Juan Carlos was more spare the second time: “No English,” he said.
Mr. Smith inserted his thumbs into the two small pockets on his vest and from there commanded the rest of his fingers to drum his chest.
“A Humanities sixth year and ‘no English’?” he said, mocking Juan Carlos’s coarse diction. “Why?” he added in English but then switched back to Spanish. “Out of laziness, ignorance, disinterest?”
The fat kid looked at his forehead.
“As a matter of principle,” he responded.
Mr. Smith twisted his neck slightly and waved his fingers as if fanning himself.
“My soul,” he exclaimed.
 
During the break between classes, Juan Carlos leaned against the second-floor railings, projecting his robust backside out into the hallway. He was looking placidly at the palm tree in the courtyard when I walked up to him, unwrapping the paper from my sandwich and offering him half of it.
“You want some, Osorio?”
He reached out an indifferent hand and took a piece of marraqueta. He opened it expertly with his thumb, like someone leafing through a book, and after closing it, he gave the crispy dough a generous chew.
“Call me ‘Guatón,’” he said, and I looked at his broad paunch and thought that some nicknames fit us perfectly.
He finished the bread off with the second bite and kneading the morsel in his mouth he tapped his index finger on my chest repeatedly while gesturing that he was waiting to be free of the mouthful to talk to me.
“Call me ‘Guatón,’ that’s all,” he said finally.
At the end of that day we had an hour off and went down to the gym with the boys to play “baby-soccer.” Juan Carlos came down the stairs chatting with a group, but instead of starting with a warm-up shot at the goal, he stretched out on the karate mat, held his face with his right hand, and then pulled out a book with a gray cover.
“What are you jerking off to, Guatón?” Hernán González asked him.
Gordo gave us a bored look and lifted the cover a little so we could catch the title.
“Ex-trem-ism-as-a-child-ish-dis-ease-by-the-rev-ol-u-tion-ar-y-Vlad-i-mir-Il-yich-Len-in,” Hernán whistled flatly.
“Is it good?” I asked, switching the ball to my other hand.
Juan Carlos put all the fingers of his free hand together and shook them at us. “Like this!” he said.
González glanced at the book again and immediately looked over Guatón’s flabby body sprawled across the mat.
“Will you lend it to me later?”
“Sure,” Guatón said. And added without looking up, “If you don’t understand something, I’ll explain it to you.”
“Me too, Gordo,” I said.
 
We gathered in the bathroom during the first break we had on Saturday to smoke cigarettes and frantically plan that night’s party.
“Do you have any snacks?”
We dreaded the thought of spending the night listening to the radio or playing cards with our girlfriends’ parents. We’d need to have a party anywhere we could. Many of us already had official girlfriends, and on Saturdays they had high-class tastes and smelled like babies who had wiped their asses with talcum powder. Everyone and their grandmother showered with their younger brother’s cologne or showed up with Richmond cigarettes inside their jackets.
That morning we decided it would be Dorfman’s sister’s birthday party. Blondie called a little meeting in the last toilet stall so the news wouldn’t spread and the class assholes wouldn’t descend upon it like parachutists.
He picked González, Marcelo Charlín, Múttoli, Pije Marín, and Gilberto Llanos.
“Don’t let the cat out of the bag,” he warned. Guatón was taking a piss behind me.
I nodded toward him with my chin and asked Dorfman with my eyes if we should invite him.
“Tell him,” he said. The last thing he said:
“Bring drinks.”
“Gordo,” I said, joined by my group, “we want to invite you to a party tonight.”
Juan Carlos tucked his business inside his pants and pulled up his zipper.
“Whose house?”
“Dorfman’s.”
“Can I bring my girlfriend?”
I...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Other Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1635420768
• ISBN 13: 9781635420760
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchbär; info@buchbaer.de; ; Weberstr. 67; Osnabrück; 49084; Deutschland