Invisible War

Abstract

WORLDLIT.ORG 23 gentlemen, please excuse the inconvenience, but this young lady is a foreigner, she doesn’t have papers, and we will not move until she gets off of the bus. The murmurs grow. The driver kills the motor. Without the air-conditioning a light, hot wind enters. The woman in seat twelve approaches and the nervous and hysteric woman insists, dragging her s’s, that she is not a foreigner. Listen, don’t cause problems for us. We still have ten hours to go. We want to get there, too. But she keeps screaming that she won’t get off and then Elena gets up, joins them, and asks her to show her ID. The officer approaches them. Too late. She should sit down before the man arrives. Too late. His enormous gold watch shines when it passes before her eyes as he reaches for the foreigner’s ID. Stupid. Stupid, naïve idiot. An incautious woman is a poor imitation of a female. She hates her. She hates all the bitches who spend their money on bad replicas of voter IDs or birth certificates. She realizes that she’s the stupid one here. She should sit down and shut up. Close her eyes and let the stupid cow figure it out on her own. Turn her back and head to her seat. One second of imprudence could bring it all tumbling down. The officer’s voice is tense. Isolated babblings from around the bus demand that the woman get off and quit resisting. It’s fake, officer, the ID is fake, Elena finally blurts out, first with fear, then with the security that she couldn’t have made a better choice because no one can doubt her now. She’s released her voice with fury and burden. She turns her back on them. The officer yanks on the woman and, struggling, they both descend from the darkness of the aisle into the asphyxiating night. An empty spot remains. Elena could change seats. Stretch her legs and fall asleep with the weakness she carries in her skin. She settles in. Out the window she observes the three men and two women, in line, awaiting interrogation. She would like to have an affair with an officer. Their height attracts her. Not to mention the badge. Her hair is poorly cut and she’s a little overweight, but that, too, was pure strategy. Guats, lazy asses, stupid sheep, she says to herself, letting her barrio talk escape. She’s at peace. Some are left behind, others simply continue. This world is for the clever. And the fortunate. Surely the most difficult part of the night has passed. She moves her head. There’s no reason to be nervous. She’s practically Mexican. Four more years in Mexico and she won’t have to move. She wants to go to Juárez, no further. Once again the rattle of the motor rises, almost licking her legs. The bus’s lights advance, cutting a swath in the night, slashing it, revealing, along with the sun, the ordinariness of things. We’ll see what happens tomorrow, she thinks, yawning. Translation from the Spanish By Julie Ann Ward Editorial note: From Barcos en Houston © 2005 by Nadia Villafuerte. English translation copyright © 2017 by Julie Ann Ward. Invisible War by Gábor Schein Glints of the tram. The nondescript houses dream numb underwater dreams. Faces are transparent bubbles popping off from the windows where water used to break through. The pedestrians crossing to the other side of the street drag heavy years in their shopping bags. Better to forget them. Some ended up on the hook of a quick death. Some merely fell ill and when they healed, let ivy run over the balcony railings and grew flowers in a case. While continuing to write, on and off, less and less. The screech of brakes can’t wake you now from sleep. Cartilage calcifies, an uninhabitable archipelago sediments on the frontal lobe. And nothing can dull the metronome beats of fear. The tram gets stuck on an octagonal square. The passengers scream and bang the doors. No help in sight. They’re slowly overgrown by...