This Translation Tuesday, we feature a story that treads the line between the fantastical surrealism of dreaming and the brutal reality of living under conditions of war. In award-winning writer Gabriela Ruivo Trindade’s compact and evocative story, a disoriented narrator reckons with the aftermath of having stepped on a mine, where her lost limbs visit so as to relate to her the physical and spiritual damage that had been wrecked upon her body and her family. Translated from the Portuguese by the author herself and Victor Meadowcroft, the narrator’s voice exhibits a remarkable restraint. This quietly moving story brings the reader to a psychological space where the narrator’s processing of trauma feels at once real and irreal, at once emotional and strangely muted, an always liminal place.
I don’t know my name, or where I was born, or how many years have passed since that day. Around me there is only a grey haze, through which I try in vain to peer. I’ve lost track of the days: entire evenings are condensed into minutes. I’m surrounded by many others, stretched out on countless cots like mine.
My head rests on a damp, foul-smelling straw pillow. My head is the only part of my body supporting me. The rest—my torso, my pelvis, both legs cut above the knee, and my right arm—I can barely feel. They’re entirely numb and don’t respond to my commands.
Some nights, my two legs and left arm come to visit me; the arm, poor thing, always hurrying after the other two. That’s how I used to move, always rushing from place to place. I loved dancing, I remember that well, and people even used to say I would become a great dancer. Too bad. I heard one of the women who come to feed us say I’d stepped on a mine, a mina. I don’t know what that is; I can only remember Granny Mina, who used to tell stories of witches and sprites to all the neighbourhood kids.
But I was telling you about these visits from my arm and legs; it’s through them that I hear news of my family and other things I’ve long forgotten. They turn up every night, come through the door and begin talking right away, as if I were already fully awake, awaiting their arrival. And I am, really; I don’t know if it’s some kind of presentiment. On their first visit I was startled. I awoke to a hand shaking me and, upon opening my eyes, noticed there wasn’t a body attached to the arm. I thought it was a ghost and cried out.
Relax, said a voice, nobody’s going to hurt you. Come on, don’t you recognise us anymore?
I looked, hesitantly, and saw a pair of legs, which were darting about in a sliding, weaving motion, a dancing gait I immediately recognised as my own. But I couldn’t say anything; fear and astonishment had petrified the words inside my chest.
It’s us, can’t you tell? Don’t you have anything to say? We came such a long way just to see you, and you haven’t even said hello?
Then I reached out, as far as I could, with my remaining arm, which my other hand grasped immediately, jiggling my bones with incredible energy. How can that be?, I thought to myself, given that for me—a head, torso and limb—making any movement was tortuous and like lifting several tonnes. Greeting the legs was amusing, though, as they stretched their feet out towards me and then scarpered off, giggling, suddenly ticklish.
They explained to me that when a person dies, they go to heaven; or rather, the soul does, and the body goes to the place of the living-dead. What’s that? I asked. It’s a place where the bodies of everyone who has died go. Whole bodies or parts of bodies, as in my case; and when several arriving parts fit together to make a new body, a miracle takes place. It’s just that we haven’t been paired up yet, they excused themselves, and we saw you here, at wit’s end, and decided to come and help you.
It was then they told me about my parents and siblings, who’d all been killed in the last attack on our village. I no longer even remembered there being a war. Oh dear, how forgetful you’ve become, said my arm, this can’t be, we must tell you everything. Thanks to our conversation, I was able to recall some faint images, words scattered on the wind, warnings to be careful, not to play outside because it was too dangerous, it was raining bombs and bullets. We didn’t know what these things were, but from time to time we heard thunderous sounds that frightened us so much that mother didn’t have to tell us twice.
After the attack in which my family was killed, along with almost every single one of our neighbours, my arm explained, with my legs contributing an extra detail here and there, the army had come into our houses, killing anything that moved. I’d only managed to escape by hiding in the laundry basket in the bathroom. I ended up completely alone. I’d left the house as silence took possession of the night, leaving behind me the longest river of tears I’d ever cried. I didn’t cry aloud, though, as children usually do. I shed silent tears, because pain doesn’t usually kill you, as Granny Mina used to say, it only grinds you down. But when it does kill you, it’s like a suffocating flood that swallows up your soul, along with the will to cry. I wandered around for a long time, not knowing where to go . . .
Does that mean that mum and dad and my brothers and sisters are all there, in that living-dead place? And I can go and see them?
It was the first time I’d strung more than two or three words together and this encouraged them. Since their arrival there had been much concern on their faces, or should I say feet and hands, maybe because they were finally able to get a closer look at me. It must have been hard to appreciate the full spectacle from up there.
No, only their bodies are there. Didn’t you learn all of that soul and body stuff at school? There are only bodies in the living-dead place, and they’re like the soul’s container, you know?
I didn’t even remember going to school; nevertheless, it must have been true if my legs said so; my feet knew the paths I’d travelled far better than I myself did. Still, I insisted, That’s fine, I don’t care if it’s just their bodies, I want to see them anyway!—when meeting someone you dearly miss, the eyes are paramount and imagination does the rest—and then my chest became overwhelmed at the thought of seeing my family again, but it was still weak and couldn’t bear so much emotion. That’s why, when my heart began to pound, I slid sideways, my chest dropped and my head hit the wall, with my missing arm unable to prevent the contact. It didn’t even hurt; I burst out laughing and my legs and arm followed suit, as my right hand lifted my head and laid it back upon the pillow.
To tell you the truth, I can’t remember my family’s faces; maybe that’s why I want so much to see them. Sometimes it seems I’ve lost my head as well, considering the white fog that builds up behind my eyes. However, my arm and legs, busy telling their story, ignored my longing. Maybe this was because they lacked a soul, they explained; after all, this longing stuff had more to do with souls than with bodies . . . So they said.
As I learned during that first visit by my arm and legs, on the night of the tragedy I’d wandered through the fields until I stepped on that mine, and I was later found with half my body missing. I was brought here around a year ago. I was unconscious for many days, fighting for my life. When I came to, I remembered nothing. I could only recognise the women who looked after me and tended to the open wounds on what was left of my body. I couldn’t understand what they said, as if, along with my memory, I’d also lost the ability to decipher the meanings of words. I wept for days on end. At night, I stopped everyone from sleeping. However, sleep here was uncommon, as many others screamed and cried at night; some of them, like me, had a missing limb that still pained them in its absence. The women were kept constantly occupied, trying to help us—they were so few and we more than many. Food was always scarce, and amid so much pain and misery I think we forgot to feel hungry and ignored the rumbling of our stomachs; as time passed, we became weaker but the hunger left us. Every day, people died and more arrived. It was awful to watch, the bleeding bodies, some screaming, some seemingly numb, with open wounds through which we could glimpse their insides.
Eventually, I became more relaxed. I’m no longer scared of this place, nor of the people here. I never speak, though, because I lack the energy to do so. I haven’t opened my mouth in all these months; only during the visits of my arm and legs do I manage a few words. The women call me Miss Mute for that very reason, and say, In the beginning you couldn’t stop shouting; now it seems the cat’s got your tongue. I smile, a very sad smile in a face which will never again laugh like it did before, and, against my will, my eyes well up with tears. Then they hug what remains of my body and whisper, There, there, don’t cry, poor thing. Sometimes, on a quiet day, when nobody arrives and there is a sudden interval of silence between the moaning and the wailing, one of the women will sing to me. I allow the song to rock me to sleep, while many miles away, up there, in the place of the living-dead, my legs and feet begin to dance to the rhythm of that woman’s sweet voice . . .
Translated from the Portuguese by Gabriela Ruivo Trindade and Victor Meadowcroft
Gabriela Ruivo Trindade has lived in London since 2004. She was winner of the Prémio LeYa in 2013, for her first novel, Uma Outra Voz, which was also awarded the Prémio PEN Clube Português Primeira Obra (ex-aequo) in 2015 and published in Brazil in 2018 (LeYa – Casa da Palavra). Her other works include the children’s book A Vaca Leitora (D. Quixote, 2016), the poetry collection Aves Migratórias (On y va, 2019), Espécies Protegidas (short stories, On y va, 2021) and a number of contributions to poetry and short story anthologies between 2016 and 2020. She manages Miúda Books, an online bookshop specialising in children’s literature written in Portuguese, and is the leader of the Cultural Team of AILD in the UK (International Association of Lusodescendants). She is co-founder of Mapas do Confinamento, a community of artists united by a multicultural project, with the Portuguese language as common ground.
Victor Meadowcroft is a translator from Portuguese and Spanish and a graduate of the University of East Anglia’s master’s programme in literary translation. His published and forthcoming translations include stories by Agustina Bessa-Luís in Take Six: Six Portuguese Women Writers (co-translation with Margaret Jull Costa, Dedalus Books, 2018), Stranger to the Moon by Evelio Rosero (co-translation with Anne McLean, New Directions, 2021), and This World Does Not Belong to Us by Natalia García Freire (Oneworld and World Editions, May 2022). He is the current chair of the Portuguese-English Literary Translators Association.
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