
Los sorias by Alberto Laiseca, one of the masterpieces of Argentine literature. Unfortunately, although published in 1998, this novel (at 1,356 pages, the longest novel ever written by an Argentine author) has not been translated into English. Thus, I am compelled to do my own translation. Here's the complete first chapter:
Chapter 1 – Enemies in the bedroom
Isekai changed the mate and prepared to prepare another kettle. The Sorias had been listening to sinister music and chatting for a while. Iseka continued with his reminiscences.
Sometimes they offer him wine, and he, who doesn't have a penny and really wants to drink it, accepts. But the soda company's collaboration is like Russian military aid: it has a political price. They start asking him why he leads the way he does: "You're educated, right? Huh? Why aren't you answering? You're not going to tell me you're uneducated." Another Soria: "How far did you go?" Iseka: "You only completed sixth grade in high school." "You completed high school?" Iseka: "Mhrgh . . . . eh . . . mh . . . grff." "What? I didn't understand a word you said." Since Iseka can't speak, he turns to his brother: "Did you understand what he said?" The other, instead of answering, repeated the question: "Did you complete high school?" Iseka, who, mistakenly and foolishly, in the era I'm dealing with, has the principle of not lying, says full of anger: "Yes." With astonishment the dreaded question: "And what are you doing here? Why aren't you working in a bank?" "I don't like it." "What do you mean you don't like it? Uuh . . . If you had your education you wouldn't be working in a car wash. Do you want me to introduce you to a Chilean friend of mine who is influential and can recommend you for a job at a desk?" "No . . . listen to me, Soria. I don't want to work a desk job because I don't like it." "What do you mean you don't like him? But he's no bother to me. On the contrary, what we want is for you to be happy. I'm going to give you the Chilean's address." He searches through his clothes in vain. Iseka prays that he doesn't find it. "Luis, do you have it?" Luis takes out a rusty little notebook: "Yes. Here it is." He passes it to the other Soria who reads and says: "Iseka, write it down: Chacabuco one thousand five hundred . . . ." Iseka: "Listen to me, Soria: don't give me the address. I'm not going to see the Chilean." You don't like the Chilean because he's Chilean.” To the brother: “He hates Chileans." “I don't hate Chileans, Soria. It is simply that I do not want to go.” "But it's not a bother to me." "It's not whether it is or isn't a bother to you, Soria. It's that I don't want to go, Soria." I'm already annoying: "But why?" "Why not." "Because no, it's not a reason." Iseka feels like informing him: "Because I don't feel like it, you son of a bitch." Instead, he says something equivalent: "Because I don't feel like it, Soria." The other looks at him regretfully, his anger now over: "You're going down the wrong path, Isea." "Well, Soria." "How so? I'm telling you this to make you react." Iseka would like to say to them: "You fucking gaucho sons of bitches; stop harassing me. Why don't you mind your own business?" He doesn't say a word of desire for two main reasons. First: they're two guys, really strong and meaner than shit. They're not at all against aggression. They're as Buddhist and unviolent as General Tojo. Second: if he fights with the Sorias, the owner of the boarding house will move him to another room and put him with the other Sorias, just as bad as these guys, and it all starts all over again. That's why he answers: "Leave me alone, leave me alone... I don't like it, see?" The other brother, Luis, comes to Iseka's defense: "No. Leave me alone, leave me alone... I don't like it, see?" The other brother, Luis, comes to Iseka's defense: "No. It's fine. Yes, I understand Iseka. He doesn't like a desk job, Juan Carlos. Understand him. I wouldn't work there even if I knew the job, because I don't like being locked up. It's really hard." The other, hesitating: "Well, of course, looking at it from that point of view... " "But yes, Juan Carlos. He's right. No. What you have to do, Iseka, is decide to come with us to the car wash on Anasco and Uerbal and work there nine, ten hours, as many as you want, and in that way..." And he has to put up with them every day.
Chapter 1 – Enemies in the bedroom
When Person Iseka opened his eyes in the morning, the first thing he saw was a Soria. Not Luis Soria, who was close to him, but the person farther away: Juan Carlos Soria.
This Soria, when he gets up in the morning, thinks Iseka, does so in the form of a master class, without a colloquium, one of those that were used in faculties in the past. He's a one-hop optimist. Not me. I take as many minutes as I can: I'm very lazy in bed. He creates all the forward inertia necessary to start the day, using yogurt and breathing as a clarion and music, respectively. It is only when he wakes up from his nap that he lets us down. He's constructed a kind of lowerable paper headband so that the light does not prevent him from sleeping. Again, it's only when he wakes up that he lets us down. Indeed, he no longer jumps up, but at that moment, with his blindfold over his tow-like hair, he resembles a defeated chief of the Toba Indians forced to leave his land and live on a reservation. And, to top it off, he continually gives me advice.
When Iseka began to wake up, in the interval between Soria and unconsciousness, he saw, as if through a kaleidoscope, the whole process and its ebbs and flows, with comings and goings: unconsciousness, subconsciousness, walls of the room, Soria; and vice versa: Soria, walls of the room, descent into the interior, almost falling into the deepest subliminal abysses. So, in his chaotic mix of wakefulness and sleep, he was able to observe:
Yellow-backed amphibians/cathedrals with grey stained glass windows/central concentrations of material/peripheral concentrations/a noisy fly that bounced a thousand times on the mirror glass belonging to the wardrobe in the room. An unclean edge of the same wardrobe we shared.
Iseka's half-veiled eyes ran to the left and down, touched the wall and, as his head accompanied their movement, compelled his eyes to continue in free fall until they reached the farthest of the two Sorias. His vision then receded, scorched into the oblivion of sleep, like the horn of a snail touching a hot iron.
A guy is going to dig someone up and invites me to follow him. We take out a coffin with other lids inside, one after the other, like a Chinese box. Each lid has strange drawings reminiscent of voodoo. We tear off the last one, extracting from the final sarcophagus a living man, made of bronze, who is writhing in his bonds.
The other horn of the snail—its eyelids flickering open once more in a repeated struggle for consciousness—brushed against the nearest Soria's face. Scorched by the touch, he recoiled in confusion and retreated into sleep.
He does not utter a sound, but the face of the bronze man denotes that, at least for the moment, he has gone mad with pain. His phallus, large and erect, is ploughed into his belly - by ropes, like everything else - with such force that the ropes must do enormous damage. / rocket planes / red-headed flies / great planes of dream-black / glazed amphibians / flowers in liquid air / stone plateaus / elemental jewels / the face of the one I still love in spite of the goddess of the abyss / earthquakes / disintegration of nuclei.
Since the snail no longer had eyes on the tips of its horns, it was shaken, like an earthquake, to wake up despite the Soria.
And Iseka woke up.
Juan Carlos Soria was no longer in his bed. He had been the first to get up, and with a start. He turned his face and said to the one in the middle bed, his brother:
- Luis, get up, I'm already preparing the coffee.
Luis Soria moved his body and stood up. He used only a fraction of the speed that the other had used because, as he claimed, he got dizzy doing it quickly. This second Soria, sleepy, looked at Iseka - who now had his eyes wide open - emitting the primitive hatred that he always had for him, although simulated (even to himself). The fact that he was still half asleep nullified the censorship and he could allow himself at that moment what he repressed the rest of the day.
Luis Soria looked down and found his black socks, decorated with artistic red, yellow and green rhombuses. He put them on. His shoes too. Grotesque and full of hate, he groped his way in his underwear to his pants, which were lying near the table, on one of the only two chairs in the room. When he started to put it on, Iseka was already getting up, trying to convince himself that in four minutes he would prepare mate and everything would taste better. It wasn't true, but he desperately needed to believe it.
“Also - look, Iseka -, it's Saturday and you don't have to work.” Iseka just got up.
In reality, the worst of the day was already over.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves, because perhaps the above remark is just an optimistic statement on our part. The Soria brothers gave him advice. Especially Juan Carlos, the elder, who was the one of the two who took the lead; the bigger one, with the face of an Indian from a camp, with hair like tow (the other Soria had hair forming curls and tiny pimples on his face). Super-Soria came across, due to his attitudes and sentences, as a kind of incorrect Lao-Tse, a ceremonious oaf, a rough and coarse diplomat. That knight of Versailles snorted gallantly. It was almost madrigal-like in its rustic thoughtfulness; solvent and handy in spreading wear and tear and idiocy. A real feeble-minded Buddha. A truely enlightened master, but without the circuts of his brain working. Conscientious in the proposed task: putting one's heavy foot in the quicksand of what is unknown – a true textual void. An authority on vagueness and inaccuracy (on making them, that is). Thoroughly documented in the most advanced techniques for making minute errors. Only with worse millimetric accuracy did his sentences fail to achieve the impossibility of absolute correctness. Unshakeable, unchanging in his idiocy. A true Zen monk whose brain a peasant had reduced, leaving him rather stubborn. In S.S.; perhaps not because of his race, but because of his forehead: half a finger, a single convolution.
I'm going to quote some of Juan Carlos Soria's quotes; not as he said them, but as they sounded to Iseka, after translating them from his impossible slang: "The Tao that one can speak of is not the true Tao, you see, Chief?” "The names that can designate him are not absolute names, are they, gov?" (photograph taken in flight by the Cockney time machine). "The nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth. The named, the matrix of all things. Stop picking your fingers at the pieces, Luis. "Both, what cannot be named and what can be named, are actually the same. I don't know its name, so I'll call it Tao. I don't know its name, so I'll call it Great." (Signed: Lao Tsoria). Son of a thousand bitches. Confusoria said: "Violence is regrettable." Otto: "A prudent man will make few mistakes and will never die the death of my wounds," said Huan Carlucio Etcetera, and others. Soria eating yogurt with sugar. Buddha said: "All theories are gray. Only the Tree of Life is green." Soria, who had extracted this phrase from his only book that he read for ten minutes every day: The Ten Thousand Best Sensations of the Brain's Strongmen, proceeded to interpret it. His revelation was the following: the Tree of Life is yogurt. You have to take it every morning to turn as green as the Tree of Life and be young, strong, and handsome like me, Soria. Confucius said: "Iseka, this is the healthiest thing in the world. Instead of the bottle of wine you down every night and is full of coloring, you can buy half a kilo of bread and a yogurt, and it feeds you while not harming you." - the word "harm," instead of "evil," he saw written in the aforementioned book. In this case, it was used correctly; it just so happened that he also used it on occasions such as "the carburetor is damaged," etc. - Then he continued, looking at the manuscripts of Iseka's unfinished novel: "Why, instead of writing nonsense—well, I don't know what it is, but what good is it to you, eh?—don't you come with us to the car wash? Well, go on, work nine or ten hours a day, as long as you want, and make some money. That way you'll build yourself a position, and tomorrow you'll buy a kiosk or a store or something. I'll tell you frankly: that's what I'm planning on doing. That's why I work and save. And you have to do the same. Reason it out. "Don't interfere in my private life, Soria." "But how could I not interfere!? I have to help you reason." With the lowest level of respect for others, a busybody and a son of a bitch. While the water for the mate was heating, Iseka, like many other times, relived passages from his time with the Sorias in the present tense, as if the present weren't enough: things occupy him and/or use them. They shave in their aluminum jug, which is used for drinking milk; he doesn't clean it, and said jug ends up full of short hairs. They sit on their bed, blinking, tipping, chirping, quacking happily, etc. They let out squeals of joy similar to those of deaf-mutes in bars, etc. They address Iseka, who drinks wine to be able to tolerate them: "You shouldn't drink wine. It's bad for you. Eat yogurt; it doesn't hurt your stomach and is good for your liver, and it's also nutritious." Then they read at three in the morning, drunk, with cod or coca, turn on the radio, and chat while they undress and go to bed.
Because Beto - another of his brothers, there were ten of them - told me: "You and that girl . . . " "Yeah, sure, but you know how Beto is. He's old-fashioned. Now, I'm going to tell you frankly: she's a coward." "Sure! But she's still good." "I'm not saying that she might not be good. I'm saying that she's a hunk. She likes to go around looking for women." "And . . . yes. But she's good." "She is good. Or at least she's hot in the ass. I swear on my milk, like the Basque guy in the other room says. And then Beto didn't want to get in the taxi." "Of course, he didn't understand what we were saying at first . . . well, by then we were all drunk; I think even the security guard was drunk." (Both laugh). "Of course, you know how strong Beto is: strong as an ox. He already wanted to beat the security guard up . . . Eh . . . Eh? Isn't it true that he already wanted to beat the security guard up? What do you think?" And, yes. I think . . . So that means that later Beto . . . "And everything like that. Character Iseka can't sleep because of these guys' voices. If they would keep quiet now, despite having woken him up, maybe he could go back to sleep. But half an hour later, while he's completely awake, they're still talking. Finally they fall silent, but Iseka can't rest anymore and sees how the others are sleeping soundly. And tomorrow I have to get up . . . Tomorrow's not a fucking mess: now, in two hours I'm going to get up and go to Jaburo."
He also revived - the water was ready, he took it out of the game and after paying for it he began to drink mate - a scene that took place a certain afternoon. The two Sorias and Iseka, each lying in their respective beds. Luis Soria says: "Let's take a test that a girl taught me." Iseka: "A what?" "A test. Don't tell me you don't know what a test is." - Showing off -: You who study so much." "And... no." "A test is what you use to find out things about yourself, like you are." "Ah! A test, you mean." He smiled, angry at being taught and above all furious with himself, since when they corrected him he couldn't help but change his face and he knew that the other had noticed, he looked at Iseka out of the corner of his eye. Leaving the subtelescope stuck in his corner of the tail, he says: "Well, test or tests, in this case it's the same if we understand each other. - Almost humble, he continues - : Tests is what you say, right?" Iseka, who doesn't want to irritate him again: "Ehm . . . yes, yes" "Well. Let's go make a test that a girl taught me. It only serves to determine whether a person is aggressive or not. Nothing more. - He looks at the brother lying next to him - : "Shall we do it?" "Yes, go ahead." "Sign here." And he gives him a blank sheet of paper and a pencil. The youngest Soria passes the paper to Iseka, who, in order to avoid being rude, must also sign. What a dilemma! If he doesn't sign, they hate him; if he signs, he gives them something, he accepts the humiliation, and, what can I say, if the test has any truth to it, they notice things about you. Signature. Soria looks and analyzes with a very competent air: "Well... you - to his brother - are aggressive, but it seems you control your aggression. I mean, you can be aggressive if you want, but you have to hold it in." The other Soria: "Ah, ah ah ah..." "As for you, Iseka, the analysis reveals that you are aggressive." He looks at him in a counseling and paternal way, like one might speak to an idiot: "Why are you like this, Iseka, huh?" He furiously crumples the paper into a ball and angrily throws it against the wardrobe, throws the pencil into the shit, lies down as comfortably as possible on the bed, crosses his ankles, does the same with his arms across his chest, and smiles beatifically: "What a girl Beto got up last night... eh Juan Carlos?" Juan Carlos, like the giant of Macunaima, answers affirmatively: "Oh." Since he seems to offend his brother with such a laconic reply, he clarifies his opinion: "Nice girl, Luis. Nice."
Then they start listening to horrible music through a transistor radio. Iseka listens, furious and filled with hatred. He can't write. Furthermore, as on many other occasions, they'll ask him what he writes, why, what for, and so on. Furthermore, it seems like a desecration to him to continue his work in front of these guys, even if he knows they're not going to ask him anything or say anything.Isekai changed the mate and prepared to prepare another kettle. The Sorias had been listening to sinister music and chatting for a while. Iseka continued with his reminiscences.
Sometimes they offer him wine, and he, who doesn't have a penny and really wants to drink it, accepts. But the soda company's collaboration is like Russian military aid: it has a political price. They start asking him why he leads the way he does: "You're educated, right? Huh? Why aren't you answering? You're not going to tell me you're uneducated." Another Soria: "How far did you go?" Iseka: "You only completed sixth grade in high school." "You completed high school?" Iseka: "Mhrgh . . . . eh . . . mh . . . grff." "What? I didn't understand a word you said." Since Iseka can't speak, he turns to his brother: "Did you understand what he said?" The other, instead of answering, repeated the question: "Did you complete high school?" Iseka, who, mistakenly and foolishly, in the era I'm dealing with, has the principle of not lying, says full of anger: "Yes." With astonishment the dreaded question: "And what are you doing here? Why aren't you working in a bank?" "I don't like it." "What do you mean you don't like it? Uuh . . . If you had your education you wouldn't be working in a car wash. Do you want me to introduce you to a Chilean friend of mine who is influential and can recommend you for a job at a desk?" "No . . . listen to me, Soria. I don't want to work a desk job because I don't like it." "What do you mean you don't like him? But he's no bother to me. On the contrary, what we want is for you to be happy. I'm going to give you the Chilean's address." He searches through his clothes in vain. Iseka prays that he doesn't find it. "Luis, do you have it?" Luis takes out a rusty little notebook: "Yes. Here it is." He passes it to the other Soria who reads and says: "Iseka, write it down: Chacabuco one thousand five hundred . . . ." Iseka: "Listen to me, Soria: don't give me the address. I'm not going to see the Chilean." You don't like the Chilean because he's Chilean.” To the brother: “He hates Chileans." “I don't hate Chileans, Soria. It is simply that I do not want to go.” "But it's not a bother to me." "It's not whether it is or isn't a bother to you, Soria. It's that I don't want to go, Soria." I'm already annoying: "But why?" "Why not." "Because no, it's not a reason." Iseka feels like informing him: "Because I don't feel like it, you son of a bitch." Instead, he says something equivalent: "Because I don't feel like it, Soria." The other looks at him regretfully, his anger now over: "You're going down the wrong path, Isea." "Well, Soria." "How so? I'm telling you this to make you react." Iseka would like to say to them: "You fucking gaucho sons of bitches; stop harassing me. Why don't you mind your own business?" He doesn't say a word of desire for two main reasons. First: they're two guys, really strong and meaner than shit. They're not at all against aggression. They're as Buddhist and unviolent as General Tojo. Second: if he fights with the Sorias, the owner of the boarding house will move him to another room and put him with the other Sorias, just as bad as these guys, and it all starts all over again. That's why he answers: "Leave me alone, leave me alone... I don't like it, see?" The other brother, Luis, comes to Iseka's defense: "No. Leave me alone, leave me alone... I don't like it, see?" The other brother, Luis, comes to Iseka's defense: "No. It's fine. Yes, I understand Iseka. He doesn't like a desk job, Juan Carlos. Understand him. I wouldn't work there even if I knew the job, because I don't like being locked up. It's really hard." The other, hesitating: "Well, of course, looking at it from that point of view... " "But yes, Juan Carlos. He's right. No. What you have to do, Iseka, is decide to come with us to the car wash on Anasco and Uerbal and work there nine, ten hours, as many as you want, and in that way..." And he has to put up with them every day.
The second kettle was ready, and Iseka began to drink.
Reminiscing about lunches and dinners, Iseka feels that nothing in the room belongs to him and manages to keep them from sitting on his bed to eat, and at least to curse them about that. Even if it were in that insignificant thing, to stop the invasion. So, he piles a huge pile of things on top of it, claiming he needs them. Lunchtime arrives, and instead of taking a chair, Soria, fond of Iseka's bed, begins to push things aside with short swipes. "No! . . . Don't take them out," Iseka almost shouts. Luis, angry and ironic: "Bitch. I made a mistake. The room's boss got angry." Now the other Soria gets angry: "What a boss! There are no bosses here. We're all equal." Iseka: "I never said I was the boss of anything. I'm not going to touch anything of yours." But you can touch and use whatever you want from our stuff. If you need anything, just ask. Why didn't you tell us before that you needed something?" Iseka: "No, I don't need anything. It's not that." Soria: "So what is it?" - Pause - "Can I sit down?" Isekai, in a low voice full of hatred: "Yes. Sit down." Soria sits down. He's about to take a bite of his beastly face when he turns to Iseka, who's sitting on the other side of his bed, leaning back against the pillow, eating: "It doesn't bother you, does it?" Iseka's face no longer bothers to hide his hatred: "No." Soria takes a bite and slams his fork down on the plate, hard. The fork twists and falls onto the table. The bite in turn falls off and lands on the other Soria's new pants. "Hey! What are you doing, idiot!" Luis Soria, who's about to angrily challenge Iseka, stands up and turns back to his brother, sees the mess and says: "Forgive me." He turns back to Iseka and resumes his angry tone: "And this also happened because of you, Iseka, because you made me angry." Juan Carlos Soria: "It's true, it's true. How did I not realize it before? Forgive me, Luis. It's his fault." "That's right! That's right!" the Sorias shout angrily. The Sorias, Luis: "You have no consideration for us, Iseka. After all we do for you. Every day we try to help you, we advise you for your own good, and you don't give a damn." - An octave lower -: "I'm not saying anything, right? With your ass a whistle." - An octave higher -: "But you continually mess with us, Iseka." "But I..." "But I do nothing. If it's true, Iseka: you don't leave us alone; you're continually distorting us." Iseka is surprised and asks, without any aggressive intention: "Where did you get that word, Soria?" "And you have it written right there." Losing control: "You've been reading my writings!" The Soria, calmly: "Did I do wrong?" "What do you mean, you did wrong? Let it be the last time! I'm sick of your sugary yogurt, Soria," he says, turning to the other brother, "and of you searching my things, using my bed, and shaving in my little jar! Why, or with what right, are you going to use my things?And the little jug, for example, you'all don't wash it and you leave it full of short beard hairs, eh?" Soria, with the calm of a Chinese Taoist mixed with a black-zen head: "It would be worse if they were hairs that long." The remarkable thing: this seems like a really fucking joke, said with all its sadistic brilliance. However, whoever uttered it doesn't know why they said it. Not completely, at least. It's a subconscious aggression. Iseka, indignant: "What do I care if they're long or short hairs . . .! Ah? Are you making fun of me, Soria? - With controlled anger, like an earthquake - : Soria, Soria . . . the Sorias . . . I don't want you two to use my things anymore: be it a jug, or a bed . . ." The other Soria interrupts: "Luis sit here." And he points to an empty chair. Iseka: "See here . . . whatever it is. And I don't want any advice either. If I screw up, that's my business. But don't give me advice; because when someone gives me advice, it feels like they're squeezing my head with a big hand." Soria (Luis): "Why?" Iseka: "It has nothing to do with why or why not. The point is that it is that way and that's it." Soria (Juan Carlos): "Okay, but why? We want to know." "This isn't about knowing or not knowing, Soria. I don't want any more questions about my life, or what studies I have, or why I left home, or anything. These are my business. I don't want any advice, or my things used, or questions about my life, or help, or anything. Nothing." Juan Carlos Soria—Luis is mute and staring at him with round eyes—observes him for sixty seconds and then asks (not with astonishment, but rather in the manner of a teacher questioning a somewhat retarded fifth-grader why the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the legs): "Why?" Iseka: "Because I feel like it, Soria. Because this is who I am and you're not going to change me, because I'm not going to allow it, and I want to be left to live in peace, Soria." Juan Carolos Soria, without any anger, almost with scientific curiosity: "And why are you like that?" Iseka turns his head forty-five degrees to the right with respect to Soria, then looks at him again and says, also without anger: "Damn. - Passionately -: I don't have any explanation to give you, Soria. Soria, leave me alone. Don't mess with me. I don't want you to think about me." Luis: "How could we not think about you? It's our obligation." Iseka, angry and controlledly aggressive: "You're not going to think about me because I don't want you to think about me, because I don't allow it, because I have the right to not let you mess with me and to not give you explanations for my actions. Period!" Luis, misunderstanding, said, "Hey! Just a moment, dear, eh? What do you mean by 'period'? Who are you saying 'period' to? UsejaL. "I meant 'enough.' By 'period,' I meant 'enough.'" Juan Carlos Soria: "What, enough? That's not camaraderie." Angry and aggressive, "And just so you know, Iseka..." Isek finished the second cup of mate. It was a beautiful day, so he got ready to leave. He hurriedly stuffed several sheets of blank scratch paper into his pocket, a ballpoint pen, and spit, bombarded from close range by the Soria music. "Come back early, Iseka, remember lunch is at..." "Yes, yes. I know what time lunch is, Soria." Pain in the ass. What an idiot you are, Soria. All right. Let's evacuate the sector. The Napoleonic army is retreating from Russia. They're kicking us out. The Russians don't want us. The Sorias, however, I must admit, are the most hardened enemies I've ever had. The actions of these thugs aren't free of militarism. A Soria military fervor, naturally. Or Russian. Because the Sorias, like the previous ones, annihilate the enemy by saturation. Where they must use ten soldiers, they send a thousand; when fifty cannons are needed, they employ ten thousand five hundred. They don't attack until they are sure that the ratio of tanks favorable to them is eighty to three.
The North and Center of the piece—let's call the geographical whole the Northern Piece, for simplicity's sake—saturated with Sorias, forces us into an arms race. They often make us peace offers, but we technocrats don't attend the conference table. The Southern Piece resists on all fronts. Viktoria. Wagner Triumphant decorates Field Marshal von Mozart with the spiral of birds with diamonds and the first-class harpsichord with swords. That's all. Fucking Sorias. One should be able to defend oneself from one's enemies through certain things: the art of combining sounds, time, or whatever. Creating musically: one of the differences between death and music. And so, Thanatos, who comes to you, through a musical judo, is forced to pivot on his own axis, causing him to rotate 180 degrees and turn against your enemies.
TTTTTTTTTTTTT
Soria's plan of attack: blow up my bridges; cut off the access roads to prevent vitalla from reaching me; silence my garrisons with mortar fire. Finally: take my position by assault. So far, my defenses have consisted of smoking through magical hookahs made from thickets and forests of strange fragrances. My collection of giant pipes. I have one composed of tropical jungles: the smoke passes through a labyrinth of privets. Another, strangely filled with colorful birds and screeching monkeys. Not lazy at all, I assure you. It's as unstable as an elephant giving a charismatic speech next to a Ming vase. However, you've brought me nothing but satisfaction. I also have one through which an immense desert breathes. Today is my birthday, and I've been forced to spend it with the Sorias. With the Sorias. Indeed: today I am twenty-six years and six months old. Another week has gone to the gas chamber. I feel each lunation as a single day. One lives four days a month. Do you understand the reason for the despair? Forty-eight days a year.
Character: Iseka was monologuing the above outside the basically Soria room. But he hadn't left the boarding house. He stopped in the hallway where the laundress used to hang the sheets for all the tenants. As already mentioned, that was a day of full sun. Yes. But in the two previous days of continuous rain, there was no poverty or misery that didn't come to the surface: indecent as the pregnancy of a monster. Then came the full sun. Then the boarding house laundress would take the opportunity to wash all the sheets, which, along with the tenants' clothes, completely filled the terrace. This terrace should have been, after the brutal oppression of the rain, a place for parades. Wet fabric, especially large fabric, created a labyrinth of wear and tear similar to that created by the rain. You couldn't walk a step or you'd break your nose on a sheet or a pair of flowered underwear. Iseka, on top of all this, had to dry his boots and socks, dampened by the previous rain—since he couldn't repair the holes in his shoes due to a lack of funds. In other words, his day of total sunshine was taken away from him by the misery of the preceding rain; like a surplus value that never ended. Iseka's poverty was a kind of lurking potential waiting for the moment to be unleashed.
The bitches were capable of waiting a whole year if necessary; but at the first rain, they'd be killed. Thus, this aggression, this absolute crime, continues. Killing an individual is also genocide. Not the razor's edge: more like walking very unsteadily on the castration blade. Concentration camps and a Dien Bien Phu surrounded by sorias.
Reminiscing about lunches and dinners, Iseka feels that nothing in the room belongs to him and manages to keep them from sitting on his bed to eat, and at least to curse them about that. Even if it were in that insignificant thing, to stop the invasion. So, he piles a huge pile of things on top of it, claiming he needs them. Lunchtime arrives, and instead of taking a chair, Soria, fond of Iseka's bed, begins to push things aside with short swipes. "No! . . . Don't take them out," Iseka almost shouts. Luis, angry and ironic: "Bitch. I made a mistake. The room's boss got angry." Now the other Soria gets angry: "What a boss! There are no bosses here. We're all equal." Iseka: "I never said I was the boss of anything. I'm not going to touch anything of yours." But you can touch and use whatever you want from our stuff. If you need anything, just ask. Why didn't you tell us before that you needed something?" Iseka: "No, I don't need anything. It's not that." Soria: "So what is it?" - Pause - "Can I sit down?" Isekai, in a low voice full of hatred: "Yes. Sit down." Soria sits down. He's about to take a bite of his beastly face when he turns to Iseka, who's sitting on the other side of his bed, leaning back against the pillow, eating: "It doesn't bother you, does it?" Iseka's face no longer bothers to hide his hatred: "No." Soria takes a bite and slams his fork down on the plate, hard. The fork twists and falls onto the table. The bite in turn falls off and lands on the other Soria's new pants. "Hey! What are you doing, idiot!" Luis Soria, who's about to angrily challenge Iseka, stands up and turns back to his brother, sees the mess and says: "Forgive me." He turns back to Iseka and resumes his angry tone: "And this also happened because of you, Iseka, because you made me angry." Juan Carlos Soria: "It's true, it's true. How did I not realize it before? Forgive me, Luis. It's his fault." "That's right! That's right!" the Sorias shout angrily. The Sorias, Luis: "You have no consideration for us, Iseka. After all we do for you. Every day we try to help you, we advise you for your own good, and you don't give a damn." - An octave lower -: "I'm not saying anything, right? With your ass a whistle." - An octave higher -: "But you continually mess with us, Iseka." "But I..." "But I do nothing. If it's true, Iseka: you don't leave us alone; you're continually distorting us." Iseka is surprised and asks, without any aggressive intention: "Where did you get that word, Soria?" "And you have it written right there." Losing control: "You've been reading my writings!" The Soria, calmly: "Did I do wrong?" "What do you mean, you did wrong? Let it be the last time! I'm sick of your sugary yogurt, Soria," he says, turning to the other brother, "and of you searching my things, using my bed, and shaving in my little jar! Why, or with what right, are you going to use my things?And the little jug, for example, you'all don't wash it and you leave it full of short beard hairs, eh?" Soria, with the calm of a Chinese Taoist mixed with a black-zen head: "It would be worse if they were hairs that long." The remarkable thing: this seems like a really fucking joke, said with all its sadistic brilliance. However, whoever uttered it doesn't know why they said it. Not completely, at least. It's a subconscious aggression. Iseka, indignant: "What do I care if they're long or short hairs . . .! Ah? Are you making fun of me, Soria? - With controlled anger, like an earthquake - : Soria, Soria . . . the Sorias . . . I don't want you two to use my things anymore: be it a jug, or a bed . . ." The other Soria interrupts: "Luis sit here." And he points to an empty chair. Iseka: "See here . . . whatever it is. And I don't want any advice either. If I screw up, that's my business. But don't give me advice; because when someone gives me advice, it feels like they're squeezing my head with a big hand." Soria (Luis): "Why?" Iseka: "It has nothing to do with why or why not. The point is that it is that way and that's it." Soria (Juan Carlos): "Okay, but why? We want to know." "This isn't about knowing or not knowing, Soria. I don't want any more questions about my life, or what studies I have, or why I left home, or anything. These are my business. I don't want any advice, or my things used, or questions about my life, or help, or anything. Nothing." Juan Carlos Soria—Luis is mute and staring at him with round eyes—observes him for sixty seconds and then asks (not with astonishment, but rather in the manner of a teacher questioning a somewhat retarded fifth-grader why the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the legs): "Why?" Iseka: "Because I feel like it, Soria. Because this is who I am and you're not going to change me, because I'm not going to allow it, and I want to be left to live in peace, Soria." Juan Carolos Soria, without any anger, almost with scientific curiosity: "And why are you like that?" Iseka turns his head forty-five degrees to the right with respect to Soria, then looks at him again and says, also without anger: "Damn. - Passionately -: I don't have any explanation to give you, Soria. Soria, leave me alone. Don't mess with me. I don't want you to think about me." Luis: "How could we not think about you? It's our obligation." Iseka, angry and controlledly aggressive: "You're not going to think about me because I don't want you to think about me, because I don't allow it, because I have the right to not let you mess with me and to not give you explanations for my actions. Period!" Luis, misunderstanding, said, "Hey! Just a moment, dear, eh? What do you mean by 'period'? Who are you saying 'period' to? UsejaL. "I meant 'enough.' By 'period,' I meant 'enough.'" Juan Carlos Soria: "What, enough? That's not camaraderie." Angry and aggressive, "And just so you know, Iseka..." Isek finished the second cup of mate. It was a beautiful day, so he got ready to leave. He hurriedly stuffed several sheets of blank scratch paper into his pocket, a ballpoint pen, and spit, bombarded from close range by the Soria music. "Come back early, Iseka, remember lunch is at..." "Yes, yes. I know what time lunch is, Soria." Pain in the ass. What an idiot you are, Soria. All right. Let's evacuate the sector. The Napoleonic army is retreating from Russia. They're kicking us out. The Russians don't want us. The Sorias, however, I must admit, are the most hardened enemies I've ever had. The actions of these thugs aren't free of militarism. A Soria military fervor, naturally. Or Russian. Because the Sorias, like the previous ones, annihilate the enemy by saturation. Where they must use ten soldiers, they send a thousand; when fifty cannons are needed, they employ ten thousand five hundred. They don't attack until they are sure that the ratio of tanks favorable to them is eighty to three.
The North and Center of the piece—let's call the geographical whole the Northern Piece, for simplicity's sake—saturated with Sorias, forces us into an arms race. They often make us peace offers, but we technocrats don't attend the conference table. The Southern Piece resists on all fronts. Viktoria. Wagner Triumphant decorates Field Marshal von Mozart with the spiral of birds with diamonds and the first-class harpsichord with swords. That's all. Fucking Sorias. One should be able to defend oneself from one's enemies through certain things: the art of combining sounds, time, or whatever. Creating musically: one of the differences between death and music. And so, Thanatos, who comes to you, through a musical judo, is forced to pivot on his own axis, causing him to rotate 180 degrees and turn against your enemies.
TTTTTTTTTTTTT
Soria's plan of attack: blow up my bridges; cut off the access roads to prevent vitalla from reaching me; silence my garrisons with mortar fire. Finally: take my position by assault. So far, my defenses have consisted of smoking through magical hookahs made from thickets and forests of strange fragrances. My collection of giant pipes. I have one composed of tropical jungles: the smoke passes through a labyrinth of privets. Another, strangely filled with colorful birds and screeching monkeys. Not lazy at all, I assure you. It's as unstable as an elephant giving a charismatic speech next to a Ming vase. However, you've brought me nothing but satisfaction. I also have one through which an immense desert breathes. Today is my birthday, and I've been forced to spend it with the Sorias. With the Sorias. Indeed: today I am twenty-six years and six months old. Another week has gone to the gas chamber. I feel each lunation as a single day. One lives four days a month. Do you understand the reason for the despair? Forty-eight days a year.
Character: Iseka was monologuing the above outside the basically Soria room. But he hadn't left the boarding house. He stopped in the hallway where the laundress used to hang the sheets for all the tenants. As already mentioned, that was a day of full sun. Yes. But in the two previous days of continuous rain, there was no poverty or misery that didn't come to the surface: indecent as the pregnancy of a monster. Then came the full sun. Then the boarding house laundress would take the opportunity to wash all the sheets, which, along with the tenants' clothes, completely filled the terrace. This terrace should have been, after the brutal oppression of the rain, a place for parades. Wet fabric, especially large fabric, created a labyrinth of wear and tear similar to that created by the rain. You couldn't walk a step or you'd break your nose on a sheet or a pair of flowered underwear. Iseka, on top of all this, had to dry his boots and socks, dampened by the previous rain—since he couldn't repair the holes in his shoes due to a lack of funds. In other words, his day of total sunshine was taken away from him by the misery of the preceding rain; like a surplus value that never ended. Iseka's poverty was a kind of lurking potential waiting for the moment to be unleashed.
The bitches were capable of waiting a whole year if necessary; but at the first rain, they'd be killed. Thus, this aggression, this absolute crime, continues. Killing an individual is also genocide. Not the razor's edge: more like walking very unsteadily on the castration blade. Concentration camps and a Dien Bien Phu surrounded by sorias.
Iseka greeted the laundress, a good woman from Santiago who loves him, and more than once gave her a plate of porridge. He went down the sinister staircase and out into the street. Since he was too tired to take a bus or subway, he set out to walk through the crowd. Every crowd hides a cemetery, as they say. But the corpses aren't the bodies of the members of the crowd, but rather those of the guys those guachoes murdered. A shop window. Iseka, Character, why do you insist on reminding us that there are still twenty-four days and one hour until we get paid? Why don't you think instead about those prosthetic hands behind the glass? A beautiful pink.
Iseka entered a pedestrian area crowded with Sorias; but, from an apartment, unusual for both location and time, Wagner could be heard in one of his sexual blietzkregs. Ah, Richard! The palaces you built for Cosima, taking into account the southern part of women.
Iseka decided to face the worst of it once and for all and get in, through the thick of the crowd. It was the spring offensive. But the Russian offensive. He approached a crowd. He asked. "I don't know," they responded, feigning ignorance. "Could it be that I look so different?" Nevertheless, he finally found out. "They killed a guy," said a Soria. Another commented: "Oh, pity." Iseka clearly saw radioactive fallout falling from the sky, covering the roofs of buildings. No one noticed that a young man had been murdered with a nuclear charge lasting 1,200 hours, or 78,000 minutes, equivalent to 4,600,000 seconds. How great it would be if one had a time reserve to attack the Sorias, everywhere at the same time. The attack on Russia: any summer, in an unexpected dawn. But youth only has so much. I settle for reserving a lucid minute and sending it without a fuse to Luis and Juan Carlos Soria when they're eating carelessly. It won't be easy. The Sorias' hours infiltrate through the demilitarized zones and launch themselves like kamikazes at my positions. I start writing, and thousands of minutes, spewed out by their heavy machine guns, sting the earth beside my bed. Near me, a blind man is eating a chocolate bar and tosses me the silver slip of paper. An unexploded minute. We need to remove the detonator. Call the minute-dismantling squad. Beware of the anti-Mozart son of a bitch.
Character Iseka bought the newspaper. The first thing he read:
Encounter at the border.
In a not entirely clear incident, guards from that country allegedly clashed at a technocratic border post with members of a Soria platoon from the Most Excellent Provincial Council, who had crossed the border by mistake, confused by the fog.
A Soria grenade exploded near a technocratic soldier. The soldier's remains were extracted minute by minute. It was necessary to pull him out with pliers, second by second. Soria's foreign ministry has apologized to the technocrat for the incident.
Iseka crumpled up the newspaper and threw it away. What a shame. He would have learned a lot of interesting news.
Excerpts from the newspaper that Character Iseka threw away:
Rotelium bombs are generally devices with a total temporal capacity of between two and six hours (we're referring to the megatempoton hour, of course). There are also the Super-Scary Horrible-Basta ones in thermonuclear arsenals, lasting forty and sixty hours. While the technology to produce the highly refined one hundred and twenty-hour weapon (they're so powerful because they're fed pig's milk) is mastered, both powers have agreed not to use it in the event of a conflict, as it would endanger the temporal structure of the universe. And that's where we really shit fire.
Another part of the diary:
Soldiers' Tales.
As our readers know, the civil war that has been bleeding Chanchin dry—divided into Chanchin del Notre and Chanchin del Sur—for more than ten years has given rise to countless war stories. For a Chanchinite, to say that a soldier, upon entering a minefield, stepped on it for a minute and was knocked to pieces is a triviality not worth recounting. But for our readers who live—fortunately for all—in peace, perhaps these stories are not without interest.
At 3:15 a.m., we crossed the demilitarized zone toward the enemy. An hour earlier, our planes had softened up the position with a 1,200-minute bombardment.
They fell swiftly. They exploded upon reaching the ground, or even shortly before, launching hundreds of seconds at high speed. Close to the enemy, I gave the order to strafe the position with tracer bombs. Then, on command, my troops advanced, supported by armored vehicles. The Chanchin del Sur troops counterattacked almost immediately. I am always amazed by their commanders' ability to recover from the worst surprises and build up new reserves. Every now and then, orders like this were heard from our side: "Tank to the right! 450! Fire!"
As we advanced, we saw piles of enemy and our own tanks burning on both sides. Nothing was more terrifying than seeing a burning tank for the first time. It's demoralizing to realize that such a monster can also be destroyed. Then you get used to it.
A bunker was bothering us. An officer took a high-explosive, high-dispersion minute shell and threw it out the muzzle. The minute shell exploded in sixty seconds, which in turn detonated in three hundred and five seconds. The path was clear, and we continued advancing!
On another page:
Temporal physicists working on particle acceleration are exposed to great danger. A second radioactive object managed to penetrate the protective armor of a scientist—a promising young man of thirty-two years old—making him shit himself forever.
But Persona didn't read any of this. The newspaper was far behind him, and Iseka stared at the windows of the buildings, as if they were enormous closets in a boarding house. "Hide and seek, always hide and seek with my ghosts, among sliding forests. Like mirrors. A boarding house is a piece of land surrounded by water. A year and a half ago I lived in Carlos Calvo. Now, after our great victories in Russia, I live in Alberti: a piece of water surrounded by land. Good news. Suicide is practiced by the greatest athletes. You can only hunt one game, on the fly. It's so expensive that only the very rich practice it. After the hunt, the game is counted and displayed, stared at and watched by those who didn't dare to hunt.
Or maybe not. You don't kill anything. And screw the Sorias who have to put up with me. In my early days, I was predominantly an agriculturalist. I planted vast expanses of wheat and corn. One day, the locusts appeared. Not a single blade remained. I then dedicated myself to eating the insects responsible: grinding them into mush in a mortar and, then, in the form of sun-dried cakes, mitigating my food shortages. After losing several crops in the same way, the idea of industrializing them arose in my mind. That is to say, no longer fighting fruitlessly against the locusts, but, as in judo, taking advantage of the enemy's momentum and turning it in my favor. In this way, I planted more wheat and corn than ever before for the little animals to eat. I even established industrial chains. At first, I only obtained bread and oil from the bugs. Then, progressively, all the heavy industry. Spring begins when you arrive. And if I hear this is so, why do I put up with the Sorias? Because I'm mistaken and an idiot. I came to live here right on the border, in this city shared by Sorias and technocrats. From here you can see the lands of Soria. I think I have two solutions. Either become totally Soria myself, or order myself to move to the technocratic domains of the Monitor. Are you trying to tell me who the hell told me, out of some misguided purity, to challenge the Sorias here on the border, to become visible? The boarding house where I live and the very job I have—cleaning laborer—are on the border between being and self-being, equidistant from Technocracy and Soria. "Many years ago I was expelled to Mozart's East and placed on the border between sex and nothingness. They placed Wagnerian angels at the entrance, armed with fiery swords to prevent me from returning," I wrote long ago. And why should this remain true? Learning a little cunning is what I need. Exploiting the locusts seems like a good start. The misfortune will ensue if even this procedure doesn't work out and the sorias continue to detect you. The metaphysicians are wrong: the problem isn't "to be or not to be." To be or anti-being is the question. Nothingness is only one of the consequences suffered by men and by being itself, due to their defeat by anti-being. This diabolical entity, far from limiting itself like a madman to attacking a group of people, attacks the entire cosmos, imposing discordance in geometric progression. But, as I was saying: you need a little cunning... and humor. The procedure for eating locusts, that's it."
And Character Iseka, as if in a gigantic theater, began to babble with a thousand lips, as Wude said: "I'm horribly worried, Hector Hectorida: this year the locusts are taking a long time to arrive. The invasion is delayed. Where are the benevolent locusts? We'll have no choice but to eat the wheat and corn, to which our palates have grown unaccustomed. Crisis in heavy industry. Oil rationing. Langostian & Company is about to go bankrupt. Locusts: will we have to fall into the paradox of having to synthesize them?" Bone of the Pits, assistant, introduces himself to Persona and says: "I must inform you, Superduke, that as if our misfortunes weren't enough, the jars where we kept the emperor's sacred olives have been stolen." Iseka: "It horrifies me. And tell me: can't you at least bring me volatile soup and a chelonid cutlet?" Bone of the Pits: "Impossible, sire. Of the volatiles, the one who didn't have his throat twisted a while ago is because they did dorremifasol. As for the chelonids, they've disappeared." Iseka, with horrified disgust: Aaah! Where are the chelonids! Could it be that the chelonids have been stolen too, after we were feeding them bread and milk? "The sacred olives and the chelonids have been stolen!" Character Iseka banishes the theater from his mind and sweeps the buildings with his fingers like a giant five-pronged rake.
He comments to himself:
Let's hope not. At least it's worth a try.
He turned his back on the land of Soria and headed to an aunt's house, who wanted him to get her a job as a telephone operator. It wasn't much, but it was better than the Concentration Camp. He had to, nonetheless, retrace his steps one last time. He entered the room. The Sorias had gone to the movies. He packed up his works and few belongings, as he famously said, gave the key to Don Flores, and ran away. It was time. If he was staying one more minute, who knows what could have happened to him. He went out into the street. He crossed the demilitarized buildings along the border and entered the technocratic part of the city.
He was in the country of the Monitor.
Iseka entered a pedestrian area crowded with Sorias; but, from an apartment, unusual for both location and time, Wagner could be heard in one of his sexual blietzkregs. Ah, Richard! The palaces you built for Cosima, taking into account the southern part of women.
Iseka decided to face the worst of it once and for all and get in, through the thick of the crowd. It was the spring offensive. But the Russian offensive. He approached a crowd. He asked. "I don't know," they responded, feigning ignorance. "Could it be that I look so different?" Nevertheless, he finally found out. "They killed a guy," said a Soria. Another commented: "Oh, pity." Iseka clearly saw radioactive fallout falling from the sky, covering the roofs of buildings. No one noticed that a young man had been murdered with a nuclear charge lasting 1,200 hours, or 78,000 minutes, equivalent to 4,600,000 seconds. How great it would be if one had a time reserve to attack the Sorias, everywhere at the same time. The attack on Russia: any summer, in an unexpected dawn. But youth only has so much. I settle for reserving a lucid minute and sending it without a fuse to Luis and Juan Carlos Soria when they're eating carelessly. It won't be easy. The Sorias' hours infiltrate through the demilitarized zones and launch themselves like kamikazes at my positions. I start writing, and thousands of minutes, spewed out by their heavy machine guns, sting the earth beside my bed. Near me, a blind man is eating a chocolate bar and tosses me the silver slip of paper. An unexploded minute. We need to remove the detonator. Call the minute-dismantling squad. Beware of the anti-Mozart son of a bitch.
Character Iseka bought the newspaper. The first thing he read:
Encounter at the border.
In a not entirely clear incident, guards from that country allegedly clashed at a technocratic border post with members of a Soria platoon from the Most Excellent Provincial Council, who had crossed the border by mistake, confused by the fog.
A Soria grenade exploded near a technocratic soldier. The soldier's remains were extracted minute by minute. It was necessary to pull him out with pliers, second by second. Soria's foreign ministry has apologized to the technocrat for the incident.
Iseka crumpled up the newspaper and threw it away. What a shame. He would have learned a lot of interesting news.
Excerpts from the newspaper that Character Iseka threw away:
Rotelium bombs are generally devices with a total temporal capacity of between two and six hours (we're referring to the megatempoton hour, of course). There are also the Super-Scary Horrible-Basta ones in thermonuclear arsenals, lasting forty and sixty hours. While the technology to produce the highly refined one hundred and twenty-hour weapon (they're so powerful because they're fed pig's milk) is mastered, both powers have agreed not to use it in the event of a conflict, as it would endanger the temporal structure of the universe. And that's where we really shit fire.
Another part of the diary:
Soldiers' Tales.
As our readers know, the civil war that has been bleeding Chanchin dry—divided into Chanchin del Notre and Chanchin del Sur—for more than ten years has given rise to countless war stories. For a Chanchinite, to say that a soldier, upon entering a minefield, stepped on it for a minute and was knocked to pieces is a triviality not worth recounting. But for our readers who live—fortunately for all—in peace, perhaps these stories are not without interest.
At 3:15 a.m., we crossed the demilitarized zone toward the enemy. An hour earlier, our planes had softened up the position with a 1,200-minute bombardment.
They fell swiftly. They exploded upon reaching the ground, or even shortly before, launching hundreds of seconds at high speed. Close to the enemy, I gave the order to strafe the position with tracer bombs. Then, on command, my troops advanced, supported by armored vehicles. The Chanchin del Sur troops counterattacked almost immediately. I am always amazed by their commanders' ability to recover from the worst surprises and build up new reserves. Every now and then, orders like this were heard from our side: "Tank to the right! 450! Fire!"
As we advanced, we saw piles of enemy and our own tanks burning on both sides. Nothing was more terrifying than seeing a burning tank for the first time. It's demoralizing to realize that such a monster can also be destroyed. Then you get used to it.
A bunker was bothering us. An officer took a high-explosive, high-dispersion minute shell and threw it out the muzzle. The minute shell exploded in sixty seconds, which in turn detonated in three hundred and five seconds. The path was clear, and we continued advancing!
On another page:
Temporal physicists working on particle acceleration are exposed to great danger. A second radioactive object managed to penetrate the protective armor of a scientist—a promising young man of thirty-two years old—making him shit himself forever.
But Persona didn't read any of this. The newspaper was far behind him, and Iseka stared at the windows of the buildings, as if they were enormous closets in a boarding house. "Hide and seek, always hide and seek with my ghosts, among sliding forests. Like mirrors. A boarding house is a piece of land surrounded by water. A year and a half ago I lived in Carlos Calvo. Now, after our great victories in Russia, I live in Alberti: a piece of water surrounded by land. Good news. Suicide is practiced by the greatest athletes. You can only hunt one game, on the fly. It's so expensive that only the very rich practice it. After the hunt, the game is counted and displayed, stared at and watched by those who didn't dare to hunt.
Or maybe not. You don't kill anything. And screw the Sorias who have to put up with me. In my early days, I was predominantly an agriculturalist. I planted vast expanses of wheat and corn. One day, the locusts appeared. Not a single blade remained. I then dedicated myself to eating the insects responsible: grinding them into mush in a mortar and, then, in the form of sun-dried cakes, mitigating my food shortages. After losing several crops in the same way, the idea of industrializing them arose in my mind. That is to say, no longer fighting fruitlessly against the locusts, but, as in judo, taking advantage of the enemy's momentum and turning it in my favor. In this way, I planted more wheat and corn than ever before for the little animals to eat. I even established industrial chains. At first, I only obtained bread and oil from the bugs. Then, progressively, all the heavy industry. Spring begins when you arrive. And if I hear this is so, why do I put up with the Sorias? Because I'm mistaken and an idiot. I came to live here right on the border, in this city shared by Sorias and technocrats. From here you can see the lands of Soria. I think I have two solutions. Either become totally Soria myself, or order myself to move to the technocratic domains of the Monitor. Are you trying to tell me who the hell told me, out of some misguided purity, to challenge the Sorias here on the border, to become visible? The boarding house where I live and the very job I have—cleaning laborer—are on the border between being and self-being, equidistant from Technocracy and Soria. "Many years ago I was expelled to Mozart's East and placed on the border between sex and nothingness. They placed Wagnerian angels at the entrance, armed with fiery swords to prevent me from returning," I wrote long ago. And why should this remain true? Learning a little cunning is what I need. Exploiting the locusts seems like a good start. The misfortune will ensue if even this procedure doesn't work out and the sorias continue to detect you. The metaphysicians are wrong: the problem isn't "to be or not to be." To be or anti-being is the question. Nothingness is only one of the consequences suffered by men and by being itself, due to their defeat by anti-being. This diabolical entity, far from limiting itself like a madman to attacking a group of people, attacks the entire cosmos, imposing discordance in geometric progression. But, as I was saying: you need a little cunning... and humor. The procedure for eating locusts, that's it."
And Character Iseka, as if in a gigantic theater, began to babble with a thousand lips, as Wude said: "I'm horribly worried, Hector Hectorida: this year the locusts are taking a long time to arrive. The invasion is delayed. Where are the benevolent locusts? We'll have no choice but to eat the wheat and corn, to which our palates have grown unaccustomed. Crisis in heavy industry. Oil rationing. Langostian & Company is about to go bankrupt. Locusts: will we have to fall into the paradox of having to synthesize them?" Bone of the Pits, assistant, introduces himself to Persona and says: "I must inform you, Superduke, that as if our misfortunes weren't enough, the jars where we kept the emperor's sacred olives have been stolen." Iseka: "It horrifies me. And tell me: can't you at least bring me volatile soup and a chelonid cutlet?" Bone of the Pits: "Impossible, sire. Of the volatiles, the one who didn't have his throat twisted a while ago is because they did dorremifasol. As for the chelonids, they've disappeared." Iseka, with horrified disgust: Aaah! Where are the chelonids! Could it be that the chelonids have been stolen too, after we were feeding them bread and milk? "The sacred olives and the chelonids have been stolen!" Character Iseka banishes the theater from his mind and sweeps the buildings with his fingers like a giant five-pronged rake.
He comments to himself:
Let's hope not. At least it's worth a try.
He turned his back on the land of Soria and headed to an aunt's house, who wanted him to get her a job as a telephone operator. It wasn't much, but it was better than the Concentration Camp. He had to, nonetheless, retrace his steps one last time. He entered the room. The Sorias had gone to the movies. He packed up his works and few belongings, as he famously said, gave the key to Don Flores, and ran away. It was time. If he was staying one more minute, who knows what could have happened to him. He went out into the street. He crossed the demilitarized buildings along the border and entered the technocratic part of the city.
He was in the country of the Monitor.
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