Juan José Saer - Scars

As the murmur increases there comes a moment when the external murmur, extinguishing, and the internal murmur, growing, have the same intensity, the same quality, the same rhythm. They are the same. This stability of their intensity, their quality, and their rhythm holds, suspended, until finally the external murmur diminishes, but so slightly that it’s imperceptible, and the internal grows, suddenly, and like two passing cars superimposed momentarily and then separating in opposite directions, they reveal the distance between them. I’m face up, the sheets to my chin, in the darkness. My eyes are open, and they grow wider as the murmur grows. I see the phosphorescent blurs, the pale blurs, the brilliant, fleeting shapes accompanied by an inaudible shrillness, trying to make out an image that pulls the blurs from the pure fire, and the shrillness from the pure, senseless sound. But for the moment nothing happens, and I wait in the drift. It lights up, quivers, and disappears, and the inaudible shrillness swells and suddenly retreats, sensible yet remote. I step from the jetty to the vessel, unmoored, and as the vessel moves off, the jetty can be seen more clearly, more distinctly, until soon it can be seen completely. But then the images are called up to fill in the darkness and time that make up the black space.

Generation upon generation of gorillas rise from the darkness. Rough hordes drooling, with a mixture of terror and desolation, in the early twilight. Emerald-colored flies land on their open wounds, from bites and scratches, products of the recent battles. The hordes drift uneasily through a clearing in the woods, looking at each other desolately, waiting for the night. The males’ genitals dangle between their lower extremities, jiggling. The females’ are a reddish gash. They gnash their teeth and narrow their eyes, gazing at the open space around them, the persistent likeness of the trees and the rocks that remain ecstatic night and day and block their view. And when night falls they gather together, excited, rubbing up against each other around the large bonfire they’ve lit with dry branches and which fills the ridges and hollows of their brutal faces with shadows. When the tom-tom starts the gorillas form circles, concentric rings, rows that thrash relentlessly with an awkward rhythm until the weakest, panting, collapse on the earth, their pink tongues hanging out and licking the corners of their black lips. In the center of the ring, near the roaring, crackling bonfire, which emits a bright glow that dies out as it ascends into the black sky, a female and a male gorilla embrace and fall to the ground. They roll around, sending up clouds of dust. The circle of upright gorillas looks on, clapping. They make a dry sound, multiplied, following the thunderous tom-tom. The female and the male come up and fall again, embracing, punctuating their brutal movement with gasping, muffled shouts, panting, moaning, laughter, pounding. Then the female turns onto all fours, expectantly, and the male gorilla enters her. The female screams. He’s entered her completely, to the testicles, which slap against the female’s backside. Without coming out, his legs half bent, his bare feet planted securely on the ground, the male gorilla straightens up as much as possible, raises his arms as though to prove there’s no sleight of hand, and greets the circle of expectant faces. The clapping explodes, and the circle of gorillas begin furiously stamping their feet in satisfaction. Clouds of dust lift. The rhythm of the tom-tom picks up. To this mixture of clapping, muffled pounding of feet, and the constant resonant explosion of the drum is added a shriek of voices, laughter, and wailing. The pair in the center is jumbled with a mass of other pairs that have formed in the circle and now embrace and fall to the ground and lift a cloud of dust that turns red in the glow of the flames. From out of that blood-splattered dust, a pair rolls across the ground and into the bonfire, lifting a violent shower of sparks. They don’t separate, but keep rolling, covering their burns with dust as they roll. The entire clearing has become a shapeless mass of thrusting and howls. They squirm, pile on top of each other, hit, lick, bite, caress, penetrate each other with their genitals. Then the upheaval in the clouds of reddish dust starts to subside. The dust settles and clears. The gorillas settle into strange positions, some thrown face down, flattened against the ground while others lie on top, also face down with their belly on the other’s back, forming a cross. Others are on their sides, an arm stretched alongside their body and the other propping up their head. Others are face up, their legs splayed. One quietly moans while masturbating. Their breathing grows deeper and more even, interspersed with sighs and snoring. A sudden burst of laughter rises and falls. Soon, only their breathing is heard. Dawn finds them asleep, bleary-eyed, snorting and sniffling. They shift restlessly and huddle up against the cold of the dew. They grow uncomfortable in the rising light and half sit up, looking around desolately, disoriented. The corners of their mouths are sticky with dried saliva. Not a single ember remains of the bonfire, which is now nothing more than a pile of white ash. Blood-colored stains from the wounds produced overnight blend with the grass and the earth. They barely exchange a fatigued sign or gesture. Every so often some sound escapes their mouth. Some, lazier, toss and turn before they get up. Others caress, mechanically, the arms of the females one last time. From inside their caves — formed by erosion of the rocks — they take pieces of raw meat. As they eat them their beards are covered with bloody stains. Blinking in the sunlight, they take huge bites from the hunks of meat. They’ve returned to the same clearing, to the squared-off horizon of trees and rocks where their gaze rebounds. The same rocks and the same trees, and above them the same blue sky and the yellow, incandescent disk that crosses it with maddening, mute slowness, dull, that polished blue surface that fills with glimmers and which at midday is impossible to look at directly. It is the same space that every day surrounds them. They move through it, not comprehending. The one who crosses the line of rocks and trees, the motionless, constant, and endless horizon, disappears and never returns. Likewise the animal that crosses the horizon in the opposite direction, into the clearing. The teeth, rocks, spears, and arrows that patrol the clearing they’ve taken over fall onto it and tear it to pieces. With their spears and rocks and arrows they wait, crouched, for some living thing to make the precarious crossing, and then they fall onto it and tear it to pieces. After the animal has exhausted its last warm breaths and lies still, dead, they carry it to their cave, where it is distributed, the most succulent parts to the chief and the rest to the horde. The emerald flies barely have time to gather, buzzing, over the remains. When they have filled their stomachs, the gorillas squat in the shade, pensively, and survey the horizon, one arm folded over their abdomen with the other elbow propped on their palm and their chin resting on their hand. Every so often they sigh and narrow their eyes to sharpen and clarify the space that separates them from the horizon line, where the trees and rocks bear silent evidence of the other side, witnesses that make evidence from their silence. Other gorillas perform bewildered examinations of their bodies, of the rocks in their knees, their furry vegetation, the dark caves inside their sphincters, the slow, grim life of their genitals swelling or opening, damply, of their own accord. They pass the idle hours in this desolate melancholy until once again the sun begins its descent and the horizon grows red and the darkness falls finally on the bonfire they lit at the twilight, and around which the nocturnal ceremonies begin anew.