This Translation Tuesday, we are thrilled to bring you a grotesquely disturbing yet distinctly lyrical short story from the pen of past contributor Carla Bessa, translated by her longtime advocate Elton Uliana. If vultures appear in popular imagination as the ultimate symbol of death, the reader of this tale will have other distinct associations to make. Surely the first such act of ventriloquism (although we have also featured whale narrators) in our pages, the gifted Brazilian author channels a group of vultures circling an unusual find on a deserted beach: an abandoned foetus. Within its darkly illuminating labyrinth of language, this powerful vignette reinscribes vultures as recycling agents in these urgent times of decay.
But we never deprive ourselves of the pleasures of gliding in giant circles, making the most of the rising currents of hot air, and the wind blowing on our wrinkled, hairless faces, flying without haste, despite the hunger. The prey down below no longer defends itself, devotion is in its nature, it is in the end: a carcass. We spend the days soaring, patiently waiting, confident in our luck, unafraid of not finding a single morsel. Here, remains are never in short supply, the entire city is a wasteland. Down there, however, on the beach, by the shore, we stare, what is it?, unrecognizable-inconceivable, neither person nor animal, neither end nor beginning.
The foetus was only a tiny dot, a mollusc, a soft invertebrate body, muscular head and foot, but without shell. Blossoming and putrefying at the same time. The skin, was it skin?, a very thin, very tender membrane already disintegrating, it would be easy to pierce with the beak. What was once a face, is now facing down, being brushed by the sand as the waves come and go, polished by innumerable shells, sand grains and pebbles.
We land with caution. One, two, seven, many of us, skittering around, still not in a hurry, and we approach the prey. As predicted, the skin gives way to the slightest touch, it rips and tears like paper. We open cracks, holes from which we pull guts, nerves, a small heart?, tearing and lacerating the exceptionally soft and sea-tempered little body.
It is astonishing the perfect imperfection of a human body. The amount of things that can fit inside it. Unhurried but voracious, we tear out what remains of the brain, stomach, kidneys, bladder, and, oh, look, it would have been a boy.
At least he had the luck of never being born. Even if he could transform himself, who knows, perhaps into a great man, a leader, a revolutionary, a priest, the most likely truth is that he would be no more than a statistic, a number in a census. If that.
As we feast, we exchange thoughts without words, our dialogue is silence charged with everything we see from the perspective of birds.
From above, the city doesn’t lie, it has no heart. Gliding silently, we contemplate. Down below they struggle to keep the façade, the fallacy, but for us the windows are mirrors. They laugh a lot, sing, dance, laugh, laugh and laugh some more, but the rottenness under such breakable skin doesn’t escape our predatory eyes, up here the sky stinks of devastation, despair, loneliness, desperation, disaffection, accidents, murder, abortion, suicide, mockery, indifference, joylessness. The truth is, they are all devouring each other. And then it’s us that are savages, merciless, cold-blooded. Human beings are really strange animals. The task of getting rid of their own remains is left to us. They should really thank us.
This time we did everything quickly, after all, the delicacy was so small, we finished it without leaving a trace, we licked the plate, as they say, aware of the importance of our work. Because if we are at the end of the chain, we also close a circle, we are: a new beginning.
Satiated, we take flight. And we never deprive ourselves of the pleasures of gliding in giant circles, making the most of the rising currents of hot air, and the wind blowing on our wrinkled, hairless faces, flying without haste.
Translated from the Brazilian Portuguese by Elton Uliana
Carla Bessa is a writer, theatre director and translator from German to Portuguese, she was born in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro and lives in Berlin. She is the author of four books: three collections of short stories—Aí eu fiquei sem esse filho [It Was Then That I Lost That Child] (Editora Oito e Meio, 2017), Urubus [Vultures] (Editora Confraria dos Ventos, 2020), winner of the 2020 Jabuti Prize in and second place at the 2020 Brazilian National Library Award, Todas Umas [All Are One] (Confraria dos Ventos, 20220—and Minha Murilo [My Murilo] (Confraria dos Ventos, 2021). Vultures and Todas Umas have been translated into German by Transit Verlag and Aí eu fiquei sem esse fillho into Greek by Skarifima Editions. Bessa won the distinguished Off–Flip (Parati Literary Fair) Short Story Award twice, in third place with a microfiction from Todas Uma (2022) and second place with an unpublished story (2024). A selection of her work works have appeared in English translation by Elton Uliana in Asymptote, Your Impossible Voice, West Branch and Oxford Anthology of Translation.
Elton Uliana was born in Porto Alegre, Brazil, he is the co-editor of the Brazilian Translation Club at University College London (UCL). His published work includes short stories by Carla Bessa (Your Impossible Voice, Asymptote, Oxford Anthology of Translation), Mário Araújo (Asymptote), Ana Maria Machado (Alchemy), Jacques Fux (128 Lit, The Fern Review, Tablet), Alê Motta (Latin America Literature Today) and Sérgio Tavares (Qorpus); essays by Manuel Querino, Mário Barata and Odorico Tavares (Art in Translation, Taylor & Francis), as well as translations of work by Conceição Evaristo, Carolina Maria de Jesus, Alê Motta and Carla Bessa published in Daughters of Latin America: An International Anthology of Writing by Latin Women, ed. by Sandra Guzman, (Amistad: 2023). He has served as judge for the PEN America Translation Prize 2023.
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