Excerpted from Fiction Volume 7 Numbers 1 & 2 (1983).

A BIG MAN, he was curled uncomfortably on a small divan. A cast covered his left foot, a yellow sock covered his toes, a crutch lay beside him on the floor. His eyes were closed and except for a slight twitch that teased one corner of his mouth, he was lifeless and heavy, like stone.

His wife sat on the rug, beside the divan. She had a rose in her hand but she was not looking at the rose. She was staring at the fire. She did not move at all, her expression did not change, it was organized around a fixed kind of smile. One would not have called her stare vacant, but incomplete, or loose. She was looking at something inside herself, and when she stood up and went to the window the expression did not change.

The man opened his eyes. He could see her without moving his head. He might have been staring at something that was not there. He shut his eyes again for a long moment, then opened them. His wife had not changed her position. From where he lay he could see the tops of some trees and a preternatural glow along the summits of the Alps.

"I remember something you once told me," he said.

When she did not move he added, "Before we were married."

Still she did not move. He explained: "It was about happiness. You said you could remember the happiest moment in your life. You said it was one morning, you must have been eight, you came down to the kitchen, you were alone, and there was a ray of sunshine that filled your blue and white plate. Outside, you said, it was fall, the forest was crimson, you used the word 'crimson,' and there was a woodpecker with a red cap, upside down, pounding a hole in a birch tree. I remember, you said, in that instant you felt whole, you had a sensation of completion you never experienced again, and I remember, when I told you one of the happiest moments in my life had just occurred because you shared that memory with me, you didn't understand."

The man paused, then added: "When I think about you and Alex I tell myself it was like that. I tell myself you were looking for that same childlike sense of fulfillment. I tell myself you weren't with anybody after all. I tell myself you were alone."

His wife: "I thought you were asleep."

She held her head exactly as it was before. Against the white wash of the background she looked like a photograph of herself. Then, very slowly, she swiveled her head until her eyes came to rest on the man. Whether it was a conscious bit of theater or the involuntary betrayal of a secret distaste, the moment had a curious effect. It erased everything he had said. In the silence between them, it was as though he had never spoken at all.

The full story can be found in Fiction Volume 7 Numbers 1 & 2. Please follow the subscribe link for information on ordering.

Excerpted from Fiction Number 62 (2016).

IT WAS NO USE SAYING SO, but Father had told Frank that actually Mother had been raised with her two brothers and sister in a series of rentals across the country because her father couldn’t keep a job, and that those rentals were none other than cheap single-floor houses, hastily built within the past decade, and would be long gone in another 50 years. As a young child Frank had been in awe of Mother’s “exaggerations,” and she would, when the mood struck, tell the best bedtime stories complete with sighs and gasps and fabulous intrigue and, once or twice, a scream that would shock and delight him. Other times she would render him prostrate with fear; blood-curdling screams when she saw spiders; great, loud uptakes of air when she saw a “ghastly shadow” during the occasional family nighttime walks they used to take; uncontrollably shrieking and weeping when their twenty-year-old cat appeared dead on the bathroom floor. Now that he was nine, he was beginning to see that her exaggerations were none other than little white lies; that she was well practiced at reconstructing the truth to fit her mood. “Some people need drama in order to feel alive,” she had told him once as they sat watching Oprah, her arm over his shoulders. “A shame, huh?”

The full story can be found in Fiction Number 62. Please follow the subscribe link for information on ordering.

Excerpted from Fiction Number 62 (2016).

MY FATHER’S: black leather folded and opened so many times over the years that the places it folded were white. The edges were frayed. It was narrow. He was a small man and his narrow black leather one looked small even in his hands. He was small but he seemed big. As a little boy I stood beside him at hardware store checkout counters looking up at him pulling it from his back pocket and opening it for the stranger behind the register. And I remember in those times the weight that came down from him onto me, crushing me who was shy and did not want to see because it was not mine to see—my father showed me nothing of what was inside until the day it all came exploding out in blood and bones and fire. I did not want to see but at the same time I did want to, very much, because he was my father and it was mine to see.

The full story can be found in Fiction Number 62. Please follow the subscribe link for information on ordering.

Excerpted from Fiction Number 62 (2016).

I. WHERE MAGDA IS NAMED

Once more the story began, for me, on that day-night of Santa Rosa. Lamas and I were in the beer hall, christened “Munich,” in Lavanda. The place was heating up, filling with impatient customers, smoke and voices. There was the continuous evening clinking of mugs and utensils. It was then that Magda and her life, in bits and pieces, began to emerge and expand.

Santa Rosa was back again and threatening to play a trick on Lavanda and Buenos Aires. September 30: the first day of spring. But one must put up with her as a friend and sweat out, almost gasping, the heat and humidity. The solicitor thought about it, but shook his head.

Now it was Lavanda and one had to wait for the noisy arrival of Rosa, the only nice whore, who figures, naughty girl, in Gregory XIII’s book of saints.

I could not remember having known any woman as flirtatious as her. None with her distant thunder, with her jokes like children playing with fireworks, suddenly to preside, so high up, over our conscious breathing, with thunder rolls that announced the end of the rotten world, to cease abruptly and go off with a distant carnival cackle.

She is known to have descended to Earth only once, in Sirilund, Norway, seduced by Lieutenant Glahn.

The full story can be found in Fiction Number 62 Please follow the subscribe link for information on ordering.

Excerpted from Fiction Number 64 (2019).

THE TRUCK STARTED to move. Though they couldn’t see where they were going Marcelino knew by the dips and curves of the road and by a sense of space and longing exactly when they left La Gloria into the outskirts that would bring them north. Mari, curled in Graciela’s lap, said she wished she had a hundred cages with a hundred green and red and yellow parrots in them. The parrots would sing and talk, and when she let them out of the cages they would pick her up and carry her wherever she wanted.

The drive was long and took them just south of the border to Matamoros. Marcelino slept most of the way, except in small moments of waking when the voice of a little girl crept into his head and told a story about a parrot, bright green with claws like the hands of a beautiful woman, that could carry all of them away, out of time and into an enriched Heaven they’d only ever been able to imagine.

The full story can be found in Fiction Number 64. Please follow the subscribe link for information on ordering.

Excerpted from Fiction Volume 10, Numbers 1 & 2 (1991).

Tasteless but comforting, the last granules of arsenic (arsenicum album) are melting in my mouth. To the left, on my desk, I have a copy of the Satyricon of Caius Petronius, in Bodoni’s beautiful edition. To my right the fragrant tea tray, with its delicate porcelain china and its appetizing little pots. The pages of the book seem worn from countless readings; the tea is China tea; the toast in thin and crisp; the honey is from bees who sucked on acacia flowers, on thyme and lilac. It is here, in this private paradise, that I shall start to write the story of the murder at Bosque del Mar.

As I see it, the first chapter is set in a restaurant car on the night train to Salinas. I was sharing my table with a couple who were friends of mine—dilettantes in literature, and lucky in livestock—and an unidentified young girl. Stimulated by the consommé, I spelled out my plans to them: In search of delightful and productive solitude—in other words, in search of myself—I was on my way to the latest health resort to be discovered by us, the most refined enthusiasts of the natural life—Bosque del Mar. I had been cherishing this plan for some time, but the demands of the consulting room (I belong, I have to confess, to the confraternity of Hippocrates) meant postponing my vacation. The couple listened with interest when I told them, quite truthfully, that although I was a respectable doctor—I followed faithfully in Hahnemann’s footsteps—I also wrote film scripts, with varying degrees of success. And now that Gaucho Films, Inc., had commissioned me to adapt Petronius’s rambunctious book to a contemporary Argentine setting, it seemed imperative to find myself a quiet seaside retreat.

The full story can be found in Fiction Volume 10, Numbers 1 & 2. Please follow the subscribe link for information on ordering.

Excerpted from Fiction Volume 10, Numbers 1 & 2 (1991).

ON THAT JUNE night of 1540, Doctor Faust was perusing the shelves of his extensive library in the tower chambers. He paused here and there; he would take up a volume, browse through it nervously, and replace it. Finally he selected Xenophon’s Memorabilia. He placed the book on the lectern and settled down to read. He looked in the direction of the window. Something was shaking outside. Faust said under his breath: A gust of wind in the forest. He arose and abruptly opened the curtains. He saw the night, to which the trees lent a more imposing air.

Under the table, Lord slept. The dog’s innocent breathing, serene and persuasive like dawn, affirmed the reality of the world. Faust thought of Hell.

Twenty-four years earlier, in exchange for an invincible magic power, he had sold his soul to the Devil. The years had passed swiftly. His time was up at midnight. It was, however, not yet eleven.

  Faust heard footsteps on the staircase; then three sharp knocks on the door. “Who is it?” he asked. It is I,” answered a voice whose monosyllabic “I” did not give it away. The doctor had recognized it, but he felt somewhat irritated and repeated the question. His servant answered in a bewildered and reproachful tone: “It is I, Wagner.”

Faust opened the door. The servant came in with the tray, the glass of Rhine wine and slices of bread, and cheerfully remarked on how addicted his master was to that refreshment. While Wagner explained, as so many times before, that the place was very lonesome and that those short chats helped him through the night, Faust thought of those agreeable routines that both sweeten and hasten life, drank down a few sips of wine, ate a few bites of bread, and for a moment thought himself safe. He reflected: If I do not stray from Wagner and the dog, I am shielded from danger.

The full story can be found in Fiction Volume 10, Numbers 1 & 2. Please follow the subscribe link for information on ordering.

Excerpted from Fiction Volume 6, Number 3 (1981).

THE WARDER NUN peered out distrustfully through the grate, pleasure transforming her face when she saw the Red-Head’s countenance: “Oh! Heavenly surprise, Maestro!” The door hinges creaked and the five men entered the Ospedale della Pietà, in complete darkness, the distant sounds of Carnival echoing in its long corridors from time to time as if carried on a frolicking breeze. “Heavenly surprise!” repeated the nun as she lit the lamps along the large music hall which was both monastic and worldly with its marble objects, moldings, and garlands, its many chairs, curtains, and gilt trimmings, its carpets and paintings of biblical themes: it was something like a theater without a stage or a church of few altars, both showy and secretive. They made their way to the rear, where a dome was hollowed out of darkness, candles and lamps stretching the reflections of high organ pipes accompanied by the shorter pipes of the voix celeste. And Montezuma and Filomeno were asking each other why they had come to such a place instead of seeking out wine, women, and song just as two, five, ten, twenty bright figures began emerging from the shadows on the right and on the left, surrounding friar Antonio’s habit with their lively white cambric blouses, dressing gowns, pearl earrings, and lacy nightcaps. And others arrived and still more, sleepy and sluggish as they entered, but soon playful and merry, whirling about the night visitors, testing the weight of Montezuma’s necklaces…

The full story can be found in Fiction Volume 6, Number 3. Please follow the subscribe link for information on ordering.

REINALDO ARENAS, born in Cuba in 1943, left there during the 1980 exodus. He has written three novels of a projected five-novel cycle, Hallucinations (El mundo alucinante), which has been published in English, Celestino antes  el alba (Celestino Before Dawn), and El palacio de las blanquísimas mofetas (The Palace of Pure White Skunks). He now lives in New York City.

Excerpted from Fiction Volume 6, Number 3 (1981).

“It’s Got To be chopped down,” says one. And I go out to the street. The other two split their sides laughing; they give a snort and applaud. “It’s got to be chopped down,” they repeat, circling around the first. Finally, they leave the dining room and head toward the patio. But I’m already on the street. It’s cool. The brutal September sun has departed and October has settled in the trees. It’s almost pleasant to walk these streets aimlessly. From here I don’t hear their prancing, their intolerable screaming, their constant running back and forth through the house, returning, questioning, wearing the shine off the flagstones of the patio. They just don’t stop for a minute, and when they got it into their heads to cut down the trees (saying that they were shedding their leaves and that they always had to be sweeping), they did it with such zeal that in a week they finished them all off. Only the almond tree at the back of the patio remained standing. Without realizing it, I’m already in the heart of Old Havana. I walk along Obispo, and, even though I’m not at all interested, I glance at all the store windows and I stop in front of a few for a moment, looking without seeing, or reading indifferently the titles of scientific books. I stand for a moment looking at these undesirable books, until I notice that somebody else is looking at them, and, it would seem, with great interest. It’s a gorgeous girl. I look at her from head to toe and feel the urge to touch her. She takes a gigantic comb from her pocketbook; she fixes her hair, looks at me, and starts walking, strutting a bit. Her dress, short and tight, adjusts itself to the rhythm of her body. Yes, I’m sure that she looked at me and that for a second she gave me a signal. Or maybe it’s my imagination….

The full story can be found in Fiction Volume 6, Number 3. Please follow the subscribe link for information on ordering.

REINALDO ARENAS, born in Cuba in 1943, left there during the 1980 exodus. He has written three novels of a projected five-novel cycle, Hallucinations (El mundo alucinante), which has been published in English, Celestino antes  el alba (Celestino Before Dawn), and El palacio de las blanquísimas mofetas (The Palace of Pure White Skunks). He now lives in New York City.

Excerpted from Fiction Volume 6, Number 3 (1981).

Ɪ

THE CAPTAIN AMIANA! He’d been there for ten years. There were people in the world who had given him up for dead, people who had known him. Not the rest of us. We didn’t know anybody. Amiana used to keep a two-master over in Havana when he was busy hauling illegal immigrants to the United States. Poles, Syrians, Russians, Czecho-Slovaks, Germans, Armenians, Galicians, Portuguese, Jews. From all over. Amiana charged them for hundred dollars a head and then threw them overboard. Overboard, just like that. He knew the coast guard was out there somewhere watching, through gunscopes, and he couldn’t put them ashore. That happened sometimes. Then it was uncovered and Amiana had to take off. He unfurled his sails and disappeared. The papers said the coast guard had nabbed him and they published his picture. And meanwhile….

Ten years before, I mean. A crew went with him and they sailed leeward due west, and came upon the Island. There he folded his wings and never again was a bird’s cry heard on that island. The ship ran aground on the way in and he didn’t realize it was running on land until it beached in the mud, where some little branches, too green and too dry, were growing, spying like vermin, and farther on, the mangroves. The ship was stuck there to the hilt. Amiana gave orders to lower the topmasts and to cut a path inland to the bush. A path to nowhere. Everything was the same there, and there was nowhere to go. It was like cutting paths in the sea. The bush was low there, a little taller than Amiana, very thick and uniform. It wasn’t the jungle, with musical scales, with undulating terrain. It was the sea, a watery tortoise afloat on other water. To walk through that land men had to go by their inner compass, or by the stars. The men who weren’t sailors had to go out moored to a cable like divers, to be able to get back to the beached ship, their only guide. Which is why it all happened. Because the Island was not alive. It was an apparition, like the undead. One felt that beneath it something was fluttering that did not flutter, that did not have a dead life, that saw things through other eyes. The sea looked at the moon, and vice versa, and they did not see each other. The sea did not foam with whitecaps, nor did it have anything to say in itself, or to hear, and the moon was a bit of stunned sky, a rotting welt in the sky, as the island was a stunned welt in the sea. The island and the moon were two apparitions; the island was as mute as the moon, just as unreal.

But a sailor can sail on shore, too. Amiana put his people in the bush and there he opened a clearing, founded a city. This was the City, and that was all there was. It was a half mile from the sea, where I saw it, made up of the houses of the batey, a compound of wooden buildings seated on pontoons, like a lake village. The soil was soft and things were sinking, even the trees. Something was pulling from below. The house of the commander, Amiana, was higher, painted red, and those of his crew pressed in all around. A kilometer away were the barracks and the batey, where the slaves were. To the right and left, between barracks and batey, were the cemetaries, one for freemen and one for slaves. They looked alike from the outside. They were natural stockades of trees joined by crossbeams. Inside, no. The one for slaves was bare, except for grass. Amiana wasn’t concerned with this. He had other things on his mind.

The full story can be found in Fiction Volume 6, Number 3. Please follow the subscribe link for information on ordering.

LINO NOVÁS CALVO was born in 1905 and later immigrated to Cuba. He was the first to translate Faulkner, Aldous Huxley, and D.H. Lawrence into Spanish. “The Night the Dead Rose from the Grave” was written in the forties. He has been living in the United States since the Revolution.