Daniel Sada - One Out of Two

Speaking of their aunt: in the last few months, no letters had come: nothing, not even one. As if the aforementioned had died, or as if she had no chance to write from heaven.

Looking back, it all boiled down to an auspicious sign that they should again come to terms with being twins who crawl into their shell.

What they’d always been: the passion to be one that never fully is: two, here, so many things. Fusion refashioned.

To dance, to laugh, and, to get drunk: why not? Perchance, to sing: music and labyrinths! … Moreover, the real: greeting their customers, then cheerfully dispatching them. Right? But the shop needed spiffing up. Decorations? What kind? In the meantime: whitewash the walls, cover them with doohickeys and photos of nearby locales they snapped with their camera: Sunday outings. And the famous sign … RESTRICT YOUR CONVERSATION TO THE BUSINESS AT HAND …, once and for all take it down and open themselves up to others, give themselves over more fully to the fabrications that come and go day in and day out; but once they did that, there was suddenly someone who boldly asked one of them point blank:

“Hey, what about that boyfriend I don’t know which one of you had? Where is he, what happened to him? Because … Nobody in town has seen him again.”

“Oh, don’t even ask … It’s too painful … He was killed a few months ago on a bus in the north. A horrible accident, very close to Múzquiz,” one of them said.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry for even asking; thing is, I didn’t know, and to tell the truth, I don’t think anybody in town does … Poor you … As far as I understood it, you were going to get married, weren’t you? … Well, my heart goes out to you. But, if I’d known sooner, I would have brought flowers.”

Death is a good excuse: a good dodge: marvelous lie or harsh reality … Otherwise, everything the same: putting pieces together with the same zeal: tendrils of perfectionism. Tailoring and dressmaking to the point of shuddering, like pretending to live in the ambiguous present believing they are one: morning, noon, and night: a circle: vicious or not: that still tries to spin: just because: however possible: as time goes by.

DANIEL SADA was born in Mexicali, Mexico, in 1953, and died in 2011, in Mexico City. Considered by many the boldest and most innovative writer in Spanish of his generation, he published eight volumes of short stories, nine novels, and three volumes of poetry. His works have been translated into English, German, French, Dutch, Finnish, Bulgarian, and Portuguese. He was the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Herralde Prize for his novel Almost Never. Just hours before he died, he was awarded Mexico’s most prestigious literary award, the National Prize for Arts and Sciences for Literature.

KATHERINE SILVER is an award-winning translator of Spanish and Latin American literature. Some of her most recent translations include works by Horacio Castellanos Moya and César Aira. She is director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre in Canada and lives in Berkeley, California.