Veronica Stigger
translated by Ramon Stern and Chris Meade

Opalka entered the small room in his son Natanael’s house and walked to the window, under which was a square wooden table, one of its sides pressed against the wall. On top of the table was a legal pad with a hard red cover, closed, a pot of ink—also red—and a pen. He sat down on the straw chair and opened the journal, where the following had been written:

Making an old book
a book of voyages
with pages that unfold

The story will start in a big city
—in a metropolis—
or by the sea

It will be the story of a lone man
an old man
a tired man

The man will be about sixty years old
wear a three-piece suit and two-tone shoes
and he’ll have a chimpanzee

His chimpanzee will be huge
the same size as my character
tall and strong like a Scandinavian

It will have light gray fur
(and no one come bother me, saying
that chimpanzees don’t have light gray fur

If I want my chimpanzee
to have light gray fur
it will)

Its fur will be smooth and shiny
like a shaggy rug
the kind they only have in the South

It will have slanted eyes
sparkly and blue
like those of my character

The man and the chimpanzee will be great friends
(perhaps lovers)
and sleep in the same room

The chimpanzee will have a double bed
and the man, a conventional single
And there will be no woman in the story

The two will be very attached
will go to the general store together
to the market

to plazas
restaurants
the movies

the dentist
(the chimpanzee will have a gold tooth)
and to the hairdresser

who will care with the same devotion
for the man’s blonde hair
and the chimp’s light gray fur

One day the man will need to travel
He’ll have dreamed that there is a secret
that must be revealed

—the secret of his origins
hidden in a small wooden box
with a mother of pearl lid—

The secret will be on the other side of the country
of this immense country
that he believes to be his

He’ll take a train
—no!—
he’ll take a ship

A Brazil Lloyd steamer
where time will pass slowly
and the man will think he’s drifting toward hell

The chimp won’t be allowed to go
“It will be a long, unpleasant journey
I wouldn’t put you through it.”

But the chimp will not listen
He’ll lock himself in a trunk
without the man noticing

Arriving at his destination
the man will open his baggage
and see the chimpanzee

inside the trunk
doubled over
in the fetal position

head tilted up
eyes closed
mouth open

in its rigid hands
a small wooden box
with a mother of pearl lid

He’ll fall to his knees
beside the trunk
holding the chimpanzee with all his might

His head will fall
over the corpse
of his best friend

His blond hairs will mix in
with the light gray fur—once lovely and alive
now dull and lifeless

The writing—rounded, almost childish, with big letters slanting gently to the left—was suddenly interrupted. A dark red spot spread across the page, forming a strange shape reminiscent of a corpse laid out on the ground. Stunned, Opalka closed the notebook, got up, and left the room.

* *

Read this in Portuguese

* *

Image: Marisela LaGrave

Veronica Stigger was born in Porto Alegre, but has lived in São Paolo since 2001. She is a writer, art critic, and university professor. She has published seven books, five for adults—O trágico e outras comédias (2003; 2004; 2007), Gran Cabaret Demenzial (2007), Os anões (2010), Massamorda (2011) and Delírio de Damasco (2012)—and two children’s books—Dora e o sol (2010) and Onde a onça bebe água (2012), co-written with Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Her stories have been translated into Catalan, Spanish, French, Swedish, English, and Italian.

Rosario Hubert is currently completing her PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, where she teaches Portuguese as well as literature courses. Her dissertation, “Disorientations,” focuses on representations of China and Japan in Latin American culture and explores the intersections between travel narratives, ideas of exoticism, and world literature. She has translated Daniel Galera and Clarice Lispector and plans to translate Paulo Scott and André Sant'Anna. She would love to translate Bernardo Carvalho and Zadie Smith and hopes to be able to translate something by Lu Xun.

Ramon Stern is a PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan. His dissertation explores both the impressions of literary critics and the creative narrative strategies of authors themselves surrounding Middle Eastern ethnic identities in Brazil and in Israel. His research interprets “minority literature” through attention to the interaction of narrative forms and structure with the social category of Arab ethnicity in two disparate national contexts. The list of authors from Latin America that have impacted him is quite long, and includes García Márquez, Borges, Cortázar, José María Arguedas, Juan Rulfo, Vargas Llosa, João Ubaldo Ribeiro, Guimarães Rosa, Clarice Lispector and a Lebanese Brazilian author from his dissertation, Raduan Nassar. Reading in Spanish and then Portuguese inspired him to read more in English, and thus Latin American literature has always had a crucial role to play in his literary formation.

Chris Meade lives in Michigan where he is writing a comparative study of America and Anti-America in US-American and Latin American fiction. A long-time resident of the US Midwest, Chris got confused about what “America” means. After years of study, he is still confused. He is currently focused on the historical nomadism of authors like Alejo Carpentier, Willa Cather and Samuel Delany. In these authors’ works, characters wander through geographical territories but find themselves moving between historical epochs. This nomadism within history demonstrates American pluralism without stooping to the nationalist or homogenizing clichés of mestizaje or the melting pot. Chris also loves William Faulkner, Graciliano Ramos, Ricardo Piglia, Luisa Valenzuela, Joanna Russ, Poul Anderson and lots of others. He would love the opportunity to translate the work of Carlos Sussekind and to write a study on the uncanny similarities between Herman Melville and Roberto Bolaño.