Mexican author Juan José Arreola (1918-2001), one of the premier experimental short story writers of the twentieth century
Here's my review of this powerful tale -
La Migala/The Bird Spider
"The bird spider scuttles freely about the house, but my feelings of horror does not diminish."
Right
from the first line it's clear this is a tale of horror. And that's
horror as in an intense feeling of fear, shock and disgust.
"The
day when Beatrice and I entered that filthy hut in the street market, I
realized that the repulsive creature was the most atrocious thing
destiny could design for me."
A true Juan José Arreola stroke of
irony and double entendre. One would immediate think the narrator is
alluding to the poisonous, ugly spider as the "repulsive creature" but
perhaps he's really thinking in terms of Beatrice, a woman who has been
causing him endless torment
"Some days later I returned to buy
the bird spider, and the surprised trainer gave me some information
about its habits and strange food. Then I understood that I held in my
hands, once and for all, the total threat, the maximum terror my spirit
could endure."
It appears Beatrice has vacated the premises. The
narrator, lets call him Pedro, is all alone. Rather than doing battle
with Beatrice in his mind, Pedro buys the spider so he can shift his
terror and torment to an actual terrifying presence that will share his
living space.
"I remember my trembling, vacillating steps when
on my return home I felt the spider's light, yet heavy weight in the
wooden box I was carrying. It was as if there were two totally different
weights involved: the innocent box's and the impure, poisonous
animal's, that pulled away from me like real ballast."
Pedro's
feeling the spider's two distinct weights - light and heavy -
underscores how, in addition to its physical presence, the spider has become a psychic construct in
Pedro's tormented, disturbed mind.
"Within that box was the
personal hell that I would install in my house in order to destroy, to
annul, the other strange hell - man's."
Ah, by focusing all his
attention, all his fear, all his terror and disgust on the spider, Pedro
will be free of his obsession with Beatrice.
"The memorable
night when i let the bird spider loose in my apartment and saw it run
like a crab and hide under a piece of furniture was the beginning of an
indescribable life. From then on every instant in my life has been
attuned to the spider's movement, filling the house with its invisible
presence."
The greatest fear is fear of the unknown. To live with
such an invisible threat, to at every moment envision the huge, ghastly
spider crawling over you and causing death by injecting poison via a
painful bite...well, such overwhelming fear will lead to - for Juan José
Arreola to tell.
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*Note - For readers of English, The Bird Spider is included in Juan José Arreola's Confabulario and Other Inventions published by University of Texas Press
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