Giannina Braschi - Yo-Yo Boing!

— Nah, not his horse, he wouldn’t kill Stud.

It’s like blowing up your own car, uninsured that is. Slowly, he paces toward his horse, and with his bloody hands, he whacks, whacks, whacks the head off his own bloody horse. He turns to his wife.

— Water.

— Immediately, water, here.

— Supper.

— Immediately, supper, exquisite, delicious, here.

— Now, hussy, get to work. I’m going to bed. Don’t disrupt my sleep.

The honeymoon is red dead silent. By daybreak the whole town is stunned to see the wretch obedient, especially her father, who runs home and stabs a rooster in front of his wife.

— Too late, you ol’ fart. Beheading a herd of horses would do you no good. We know each other too well.

Style is set from the start. Do I have to explain?

— This one is about the structure of fantasy:

events — what happened

laws — how it happened

origins — where it came from

— I guess from Songs of Life and Hope :

And not knowing where we’re going

Or where we come from

Illustrious bountiful races. From Darío comes my most “ bountiful U .” At least I know, but who knows.

— There’s this fine fellow, Dr. Z, who was in love with a little girl named Amelia. After globe-trotting in quest of truth and knowledge, he returns to Buenos Aires and visits her house thirty, forty years later. Potbellied and bald, the good doctor finds Amelia’s sisters wrinkled and gray, shrouded in an aura of mourning. He fears Amelia must be dead.

— Ouch!

— First your big toe, now your pinkie. Get some toilet paper before you stain the sheets.

— Go on. Auu, it hurts.

— Clean it.

— It already soaked through.

— Clean it.

— Go on.

— In frolics a little girl, the spitting image of Amelia. First, Dr. Z thinks it is her daughter, but no, it is Amelia, the very girl who stole his thunder. She stayed the same. Innocence is not lost.

— Ask Proust. In Search of Lost Time .

— Darío says the opposite. She never grew up.

— Maybe, in his mind’s eye, he saw her as a little girl again although she was older, although time had passed — because he felt the same relentless passion towards her. And she acted the same way. To repeat the scene.

— Magic realism. One of the ways of stopping time.

Realism — time runs and people age.

Magic — time stops and people stay the same.

Darío called it looooove.

— I call it tunder.

— Repeat after me: thunder. The tongue behind your teeth: Th-under.

— Don’t steal my th-thunder. I really love the phrase. As if a thunder could be stolen from the map of the universe. As far as I know, it’s a phenomenological thunder.

— Okay, but she thinks it is hers and you are using it as yours.

— I’m reproducing her noise.

— It sounds different.

— So?

— As I said, you’re stealing the language.

— Ostriker.

— Frozen serpents, she said.

— I can say whatever I want.

— Where are you from?

— The world.

— Russian?

— How did you know?

— I could have sworn you were from one of the islands. I’m from Jamaica. I was the #1 runner in my country. A hero. I ran in the Olympics. I went the distance, but coming from a small island, I didn’t have a chance.

— Don’t blame your island. Napoleon conquered the world, and he was from a colony.

— So you’re from the islands.

— I was once a tennis champion, but I quit. No more tennis. Now I write poetry.

— Once a champ, always a champ.

— Yes, once you learn to be consistent — to endure — not to lose hope or patience. I had a lover who told me that I’m intense but of short duration. He underestimated my stamina.

— Why must you bring Jabalí into everything?

— I was in a park with a bunch of friends at night. And we were goofing around, my friends and I. Some fellows came by, and we started shaking branches, furiously, cackling and screeching like the devil.

— Ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca!

Off they scrambled in pursuit of mercy. Another fellow came, and we did the same, and gone was he in a cloud of dust. Next came a family. The proud father walked ahead, and behind him the mother with three small children. We thought for a second that maybe we should not frighten the little ones, but we could not help ourselves.

— Ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca!

The man bolted, coward, but the woman, brave woman, did not run, she stopped — gathered one, two, three crying children and then ran off. Where was the father? Gone. It showed me how much stronger women are.

— Some and some not.

— Maternal instinct.

— Some and some not.

— My mother did everything for me.

— I bet she didn’t do everything for your sisters.

— True.

— You know why? Because when women have sons, they think it’s their turn to be men. Or to exercise power over these men. Have you thought about your sisters? I bet they were as talented as you are. Of course, you exalt the courage of mothers, like yours, she invested everything she had in you.

— You look like Giulietta Masina. I heard she died. She couldn’t last without Fellini.

— I am their daughter.

— They had no children.

— If they had, it would have been me. It’s so tragic that we should be born of the wrong parents.

— You never know. You might have ended up with a terrible complex like Victor Hugo’s daughter.

— Cold, callous children of Republicans, that is what they are. What we have in common is that we are misplaced in this bloody country. Because of a tragic love affair, we have to teach in these dreadful places where there are no friendships, my darling. We are always at a loss. We were meant for the theater, my darling. In England, I have always told Sarah, there is no dreadful competition among students for grades like those cold, callous children of Republicans who have an accident, and the only one wounded is my Sarah, and they are afraid that I will sue them.

— You should sue them.

— I should sue them, reckless, cold, callous children of Republicans.

— Not just Republicans, Americans.

— Is that what you have found, my darling? I have always told Sarah, and that is what you have found, my darling, reckless, cold, and callous.

— She is the most poetic human being.

— With a tragic sense of reality.

— We are misplaced. They did not even ring me to tell me what they did to my daughter. A tragic twist of fate. Clorox, I will never forget opening night in Paris, when the leading man drank champagne from the glass in his hand, and cried: Clorox! Then I swallowed, and cried: Clorox! That was the twisted night of my fate.

— Baudelaire would have fallen in love with you.

— No, he liked helpless, weak women.

— But you are helpless. Bring Sarah’s X-rays to a specialist in New York and see if her bones are healing properly.

— I’m a widow — no compassion for a widow. They write letters to the driver, those reckless runts.

— Thank God nothing happened to you, Marla .

No mention of Sarah, who is in a body cast. Now, what type of friends are they? No manners, no continuity.

— Thank God nothing happened to you, Marla.

And their parents are telling them shoo-shoo away from Sarah, she might sue.

— You should sue. Hospitals will suck you dry. If Marla ran the red light, Marla should be held accountable. That is what insurance policies are for.

— In Oxford nothing like this would happen. Wolves, instead of seeing a beautiful girl, they see blood, meat. Damned Americans, I cannot believe we created this monster.