SHORT STORY, Carola Saavedra, Brief beggining of the world (Episode in Three Movements)

I

The world had only just happened. Everything was still so new that night had not even fallen. The whole world was a burst of light. The hours passed, but the day remained the same, as if all hours were the same hour, insistent on repeating itself, in the sky and at the edge of the sky. Until the sky began to fade, and the edge of the sky took on the color of flames, the color of forest, the color of a dark sea, and the sky ended up resembling dirt. Resembling an anteater. First only at the edges, then the entire sky the color of dirt that’s the color of an anteater. In the beginning a red anteater, a gold anteater, then a gleam darker and darker and darker still until even the sky was no longer an anteater, and in its place stars, which were previously the gleam of the anteater’s body, and in its place the moon, which used to be the gleam of the anteater’s left eye, then just the gleam of the anteater without the anteater. And the moon was not called moon, and the stars were not called stars, and even the night was not called night. They were nameless, as are all things that exist for the first time.

And they stayed there, on that first night, alongside the gleam of the body and the left eye of an anteater. And they were very afraid, because fear is the second feeling that comes with nameless things, because the first is a kind of awe, which is what arises when things emerge for the first time and are not yet good or evil. Because in the instant that things emerge, they have not yet had time to be what they are, and even they themselves do not know their own nature. So the night was neither good nor evil in those first moments, and the beings cracked strange smiles. But then time continued to pass, and night remained there with its eye and its gleam of nameless stars. And they began to feel uneasy because they sensed that the night was beginning to hunt for something that would sustain it. And they started to hear noises from creatures that until then did not exist. And they did not know that so many creatures with two, four, or many legs could exist within the night.

And they felt a fresh fear that first night, and they spent all those endless hours never looking at the gleam and at the anteater’s eye. Until at some point the anteater fell asleep and closed its only eye. Until little by little, the anteater’s gleam began to dim, and the sky shifted colors, and the anteater vanished. Until it was day again, as it had always been, and this, they recognized. And they recognized the sun, and its gleam was very different from the anteater. And the fear dissipated because now the things that emerged were things and creatures with names, and they could witness them with their own eyes, their own sense of awe.


II

It happened far from there. In the beginning, there were no houses, nor villages, nor shacks, nor things that bore those names, and the land was just land and thick forest and a river that ran through it. It was a land traversed by many rivers that came and went—northward, southward—and that made noises rivers tend to make when there’s only the land, the forest, and the rivers. And the noise repeats and repeats for days and nights and days, until it’s incorporated into the landscape, until it becomes a noise that doesn’t exist, until it becomes a kind of silence.

Because silence has always been a noise. Because silence is music that never ceases. But from time to time the silence would be broken. The music. And there came footsteps and rhythms and days and nights and days that passed. Afterwards, the footsteps and everything else would go away, following their own path, and everything returned to the previous moment. The silence of the land and the forest and the rivers. The music. Until one day, amidst the footsteps and rhythms that passed through, someone stopped for a moment and said, surprised—or just with some kind of delight—look, a tree, or a river or a monkey or an anteater. Someone said, look, and everyone fell silent, the music started, and the one who spoke stood still waiting for a response while everyone gazed at the tree or the river or the monkey. Only after a long time, perhaps days and nights and days, did someone also stop and repeat, indeed, a tree, or a river or a monkey—an echo, a second voice, or a sort of response. And it was then something happened, or had just happened. They all stood motionless, surprised at what they had seen, the tree, the river or the monkey, as if they were seeing it for the first time, and they cracked a strange smile, for the tree or the river or the monkey had also stood still, as if they themselves had discovered something.

And when night fell, they built a cot there in order to keep looking at the tree, or the river or the monkey, and pointing and repeating, look, a tree or a river or a monkey, like rhythm, like music. And night emerged with its anteater eye and it seemed less frightening to them. For the first time, less frightening. And they slept and dreamed dreams at once strange and similar, as if everyone dreamed the same dream, as if everyone sang the same song. As if they smiled. And when day broke, someone else said, look, a tree, a river, or a monkey, and they continued in that strange surprise, as if look were not a command and instead a question. And they stayed there, waiting, and repeating, and waiting. Until night fell once again. And once again the anteater and the eye of the anteater, and once again they had strange, similar dreams. And many nights passed like this, and things began to change, as if the body and the name of things had become more compact, become slower and heavier. And as if the music were suddenly another, and the silence another. And they decided then to construct a roof that would separate them from the nocturnal birds and the stars, which have also become slower, heavier, other. So the time passed, and time continued, and they discovered that the roof separated them from the night, but also from the day and the rain and the canopy of trees, and created a strange acoustic there. And there they remained, around the cot and the roof and the leaves scattered beneath the roof, always slow and heavy and always other, thinking that tomorrow, yes, tomorrow, they will leave.


III

First, everything was born. The stars and the planets and the rivers and the sea and the monkeys and the anteaters were born. And things continued being born and being born and being born and filling the world that was very large still and would never end. And for a long time things kept on being born, kept on filling and never ending, until one day or one night or one day, the first thing ended. And other things and creatures followed, creatures with four legs, two legs, and even without legs, and until one day one of them—a two-legged creature—let out a shriek, which was not the shriek of a monkey or a bird. It was the shriek of another thing ending, and since they did not know that it was one of them ending, they did not know it to be a shriek. They did not have a name for the shriek that came from a two-legged creature like them, like so many others of them. Someone ending. And for the first time they saw what was someone ending and not being born anymore nor filling the world, the world that never ended. For the first time, they heard the shriek, which was a frightening and insistent shriek that insisted for a long time, a long time that never finished passing for that someone who shrieked, for those who heard, and for the shriek itself that for a long time insisted, and insisted, until becoming rhythm, becoming music. Until bit by bit it dwindled, waning, waning, until drawing into a groan, until drawing into a long and tired groan, until it faded away. And they saw for the first time the first person that was no longer a person. They saw the moment in which a person ceased to be and they did not know what name to give to the body that remained and that was nothing, just a body with two legs that no longer stirred nor uttered sounds, or groans, not even a fright, not even the wavering of the music. And so they made a circle around the being that was no longer a person, while outside the circle the children played with the monkeys, which also had two legs and continued existing and stirring and shrieking. And the adults and children and monkeys remained there, from outside the circle, for many days and nights, beside the being inside the circle, for many days and nights, and the adults sang and told stories and the children played with the monkeys and the being inside the circle did nothing. And time passed, and the children grew, and they also went to keep the being company, inside and outside the circle, and to sing and tell stories. Inside the circle, where one did not rouse. Outside the circle, from where one looked in with terror and awe. And meanwhile, the being inside the circle was less and less of a person, its flesh eaten by other creatures with two or four or no legs, and its face eaten by other creatures was the face of someone who could never have had a face. Until one day, someone approached and impatient, cold, afraid, tossed a fistful of dirt over the face without a face, for the face of a being who has ceased to be a person was a face in silence. The dirt separated it from the days and the nights and the days, like a roof, a house, and the circle disbanded and covered the being entirely in dirt so that they could finally leave. And so the circle disbanded, and they all left. Meanwhile, under the earth, in place of eyes, there were now two orbits, and in place of a mouth, a cavity, and from where the gleam and the music would emerge, now only orbits, cavities, and nestling in them, creatures. Until everything became one body and one creature.


Translation into English: Raechel Lee
Image: Felix Mittermeier