An aspiring footballer’s obsession with his former hero becomes an all-consuming quest for revenge in Aniela Rodríguez’s cerebral short story “A General Treatise on Counter-attacks,” our pick for this week’s Translation Tuesday. Our narrator is a small-town youth who idolizes football star Güero Hidalgo, but what begins as adoration quickly turns to loathing after a tragic accident. Years pass, Hidalgo’s greatness falters, yet our protagonist never strays from his mission to murder the disgraced footballer, a task that becomes less a heroic act of justice and more an unmerciful act of a disappointed fanatic. Rodríguez’s mature and emotionally complex subversion of the revenge genre forces us to connect the meaning of “pathos” with the varied meanings of “pathetic,” demonstrating the dangers of meeting your heroes—and the dangers of meeting your fans.
In this story Güero Hidalgo dies. I told my mother when I started writing, but she didn’t believe me: she rolled her eyes and looked at the ceiling, wondering aloud when she should turn off the soup. What a shame, she said, indifferent, and kept moving the spoon in circles. Nobody wants to hear a story in which the biggest football star that this country had ever produced is stabbed to death with an old knife blade.
In the story, Güero crashes his Cadillac into a bus full of passengers, delaying a good number of people. The bus has come from la Merced; atop it ride vendors who head for Chiapas every week in search of Zoque handicrafts at the best prices. So, the best part: Güero gets out of his impeccable latest model, expecting to fix everything with an autograph. But that’s not how it goes down. He has words with the driver and in amidst the irate vendors the commotion gets serious. Tempers flare, women shout. A man in a leather jacket steps forward. Nobody pays attention. He walks towards Güero, looks him in the eye and plunges a dagger into his chest. Nobody does anything. Silence. Before sticking the knife into him, the man says: Thanks for the penalty, moron. Güero lies face up on the ground, trying not to hear the words that will curtail his existence forever. The story ends like this, with my mother reaching for the wooden spoon to stir the noodle soup. But this story isn’t about Güero Hildalgo now, is it?