World Literature

WORLD LITERATURE Dead Stars PAZ MARQUES BENITEZ Embracing Water KAORI EKUNI The Man With his Back Turned AGUSTIN CADENA Undeniable Things NANNI CAGNONE

DEAD STARS By Paz Marques Benitez The story of the short story Dead Stars revolves around a man, Alfred Salazar, and his affairs. Alfred Salazar believes in true love and optimism to discover ecstasy in its stir. Esperanza is the first woman he falls in love with. The families of both of them are acquainted with each other and hence they start a loving relationship. Both get engaged after three years of their relationship. Alfredo is a lawyer who has strong desires and wants warmth and compassion, however, Esperanza is an impassionate woman having strong will and principles. Alfredo’s love for her soon fades away when he meets Julia. Julia, now, becomes a new object of his desire. Julia Salas is sister in law of the Judge, who is a friend of Alfredo’s father. Julia is an optimistic and enthusiastic person having her own dreams and desires. When Alfredo comes across her, he is strongly attracted to her. On his visit to her with his father, he engages himself in conversation with her and is attracted to her charm. Even he is so passionate that he doesn’t disclose his engagement to Esperanza. So as to avoid the discovery of his fiancée, he keeps secrets from Esperanza too. His eyes are doomed when he learns about Julia’s return to his native town. With the fear of losing her, Alfredo decides to declare his true feeling for Julia. When the Church’s function ends, Alfredo goes to meet her, though his fiancé is waiting for him. When he reaches there, he learns that Julia has already known about his engagement to Esperanza. She wishes him for his marriage and leaves him. On his return home, he gets a double blow. He finds Esperanza talking to her friend about loyalty and faithfulness. Alfredo senses a desire to communicate. He supports the reason for craving and choice over dishonesty. Esperanza soon confesses that she knew about his affair with Julia. In pursuit of his lust and heart’s content, she encourages him to cancel the wedding. However, the wedding goes ahead as scheduled and Alfred surrenders to reason. Near Julia’s native town, Alfred, after eight years, is sent to some work duty. On his visit, he feels nostalgic and cannot resist his lust for Julia and soon finds an excuse to meet her. Julia is still single that forces Alfred to dream about starting a new life with her; however, he soon realizes that everything is not the same as it were before. Moreover, Julia has also changed lost something.

Dead Stars Symbolism The 'Dead Stars' represent a presence that is unrecognized. It speaks of emotions and relationships that may exist but are not realized and lose their real meaning and significance. In the story, the attraction between Alfredo and Julia is a forbidden and taboo phenomenon.

EMBRACING WATER By Kaori Ekuni At the start of the novel, Shoko has been married to Mutsuki for ten days. Things seem to be going well. The only thing he really requires of her, is to iron the sheets of his bed, before he goes to bed, so that the bed is warm when he gets into it. She works as a part-time translator from the Italian and he, like his father, is a doctor. However, each brings a particular problem to the marriage. She has been diagnosed as emotionally unstable, a condition exacerbated by her drinking problem. Her doctor had recommended marriage to help make her more emotionality stable. The first seven prospects had been rejected and Mutsuki was the eighth. Mutsuki is aware of her condition and it does not seem to bother him. For example, when he is doing the housework on Sunday morning, which he likes doing, she has to put her feet up and, in some annoyance at this, sings at and then shouts at the plant, a gift from Mutsuki’s friend, Kon, and at the various pictures they have on the wall. Finally, she throws things at them. Mutsuki’s problem is that he is gay. Again, Shoko is well aware of this but is not too concerned. Sex does not really interest her, she says. Kon, as well as being his friend, is also his lover. Mutsuki is very happy for her to have (heterosexual) lovers but she does not seem too interested. She married him for emotional stability and he married her because his mother said that, for the sake of appearances, a doctor should be married. Both parties and his mother seem happy with the arrangement. Her parents are happy because she has married a doctor, though they are unaware of his homosexuality, and his mother is happy because her gay son has married a woman. It is only his father who objects, who thinks it entirely inappropriate that his gay son should marry a woman (like embracing water, he comments). Despite the obvious problems, the marriage seems moderately, but only moderately, happy. (We make a pretty good couple, you know, you and me. Like two peas in a pod, he says. She disagrees.) Shoko likes Kon. Indeed, they seem to become quite close, seeing each other when Mutsuki is at work. (Kon, who is still a student, later says that he is not generally attracted to men, just to Mutsuki.) She still does not like his weekly house-clean but seems to enjoy his company and the way he looks after her, cooking and bringing her food, for example, or running a bath for her when she is tired. She has one close female friend, Mizuho, who is married and has a child but who does not know about Mutsuki’s homosexuality. Inevitably, the issue of children comes up. Mutsuki’s mother suggests artificial insemination and Shoko seriously considers it, even discussing it with a (gay) doctor friend of Mutsuki. Her parents naturally are hoping for a child the conventional way. Kon even suggests that he has sex with Shoko, solely for reproduction. He rejects the idea and seems determined that neither he nor Shoko want children. When she is feeling stressed, she returns to her psychiatrist, and he suggest she has children to help. She is not happy with his diagnosis. Things go wrong when Mutsuki tries to set Shoko up with her old boyfriend (who is still interested) and the deception starts to unravel. This is a very amusing story about a quirky relationship, a topic the Japanese seem to like. It could be accused of stereotyping homosexuals, with Mutsuki being obsessively tidy and obsessive with the ordering of his books (which he divides and likes to keep in a special order). Shoko herself is aware that she can be guilty of stereotyping. (They don’t really seem effeminate, do they, though they’re all gay?” (Shoko seemed to expect all gay men to prance around like beauty queens.) However, Shoko could be said to be the stereotype of an emotionally unstable Japanese woman. However, it is all very skilfully done and Ekuni does come out with a very clever and original ending. Whether they all live happily ever after is another matter.

THE MAN WITH HIS BACK TURNED By Agustín Cadena Daniela bought the mirror at the flea market one Saturday when she was passing by in her older brother's car, and for no other reason but to make him mad, insisted on stopping. The mirror was 12 inches long by 8 inches wide at its base, and the upper part was finished with a Gothic arch. The brass frame was scratched and dented in places, but in general still pretty, with vine reliefs and floral motifs. The mirror itself was rose-tinted, an antique glass in which things were reflected as if blurred by the mist of the years, as if they were reflections from the past, from long ago, not from today. Dani loved it. She didn't have enough money to buy the mirror, but what she had was enough so that the vender agreed to hold it for her. When she got home, she begged her father for a little, asked her grandmother for a loan and then at school sold some CDs to a few of her classmates. The next Saturday she went to get the mirror. She didn't find the vender, just his wife, an autumnal blond with a witchy look. When Dani told her why she was there, the woman took the mirror out of a cardboard box where they'd hidden it. Excited, Dani paid the balance due and ran home with her treasure. She already had a place picked out for it in her bedroom. The trouble started that same afternoon. Not every time someone looked in the mirror, but often, they saw in the background, behind the normal reflections, a man with his back to the mirror. It was fearsome, strange. Because no one was standing there, and nothing else in the room could reflect such an image. The worst was that sometimes it was there, sometimes not. And it always happened that only one person at a time could see him. How then could they be sure of anything? The first hypothesis was that there was a ghost in the house and it could only become visible through the rose mirror. But when they took the mirror to other locations, the figure facing away remained the same. The family was mystified. They wanted to find an explanation for this thing. Finally they arrived at a conclusion: the man with his back turned lived in the mirror. They didn't want to know more. All they wanted was to get rid of him. Dani went to sell the mirror back to the vender from whom she'd bought it. He looked at her steadily with an enigmatic smile and offered her less than half what she'd paid for it. But Daniela wasn't inclined to bargain. She was already walking away from the booth when she chanced to hear the man murmuring, as if talking to the mirror: \"Back again.\"

Agustin Cadena wrote “The Man With His Back Turned” and “Train Variations” in Spanish and those were translated to English by Patricia Dubrava. “The Man With His Back Turned ” was written and published in issue no. 47 of the Café Irreal webzine, 2013. “Train Variations” was published in the fall issue no. 52, 2014. The Café Irreal webzine focuses on fantastical tales of not more than 2,000 words. The two stories arec classified as flash fiction since regular short stories are 3,000 words and up.

UNDENIAB LE THINGS (Excerpt) By Nanni Cagnone Translated from the Italian by Paul Vangelisti http://pippoetry.blogspot.com/2010/11/nanni-cagnone.html XL My father at home, the last days, sitting with his weight in the inclement emptiness that never healed his certainties, sitting bewildered at not understanding why children without lingering nor shelter, never did their embrace shake him. Children that in his indisputable universe diminished him. Here, fugitive identities in the dead tangle. LXII Finite space, rim of a drum. It would help to incarnate while you can, to glean light even after nightfall, take a stroll in the mist and never leave the moment alone, or it stings everything. At the end, at the end of the surging sunset, in the insecure maturing burning without a grieving scheme, the solemn episode of the leaves— rustling and that’s all. Rustling.

In the verse XL of the poem, it implies that when you are old you start to remember the past and reflect the events that have occurred in your life. It explains that the father is confused as to why his children have forgotten him and grew distance as time pass by. In verse LXII, the father is collecting the memories and he never wants to leave that moment. In the last stanza, he realized that he’s not ready for death to come. However, he knew that his time will eventually come.

江國 香織Kaori Ekuni ()

Nanni Cagnone

Paz Marquez Benitez

Agustin Cadena

VICTOR ABBY MANALANG