When Swindon Closes

Swindon Book Store at Lock Road Tsimshatsui is open for the last day today. There are a lot for Hong Kongers to worry over these days, with bad news and looming crises and such, so the closure of a bookstore won’t capture much attention. Although I love books, I know little of the book retail business, what and who are on the bestsellers list globally, what can be told from the cover, binding, paper, and printing, and I don’t read much.   

I don’t frequent Swindon these days. My destination in Tsimshatsui is usually the Cultural Centre, so Eslite Spectrum has taken over Swindon as a venue for loitering and book browsing.  I went to Swindon yesterday for a final visit. And yes, I bought seven books at discounted price.

A bookstore does not look its best when it is having the last days of operation. If one catches the closing down sale early, one has to jostle with the crowd. Less of that during Covid-19 social distancing restrictions, but, heh, there are still more people on days of sales than normal business days! The stacks of books dwindle as the final day approaches, and the remaining titles are no longer appealing. There’s no more effort to make the space attractive. The customers are looking for deals, and turning away from the counter when the discount is less than anticipated. As the cluttered shelves with books in disarray gradually get empty, the muddle turns into desolation at the end of the day.  

I started running through my mind the defunct bookstores which had meant something to me.  

Firstly, the MPH main bookstore in the red brick building along Stamford Road near to the previous site of Singapore National Library. I stood between the bookshelves after school, reading Nancy Drew, Mills & Boon but falling more in love with Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. This MPH store closed in 2003. The four mission schools in the vicinity had relocated, and the old National Library building was demolished. Over time, I wasn’t sure what I missed exactly, and it is certainly more than MPH main bookstore. The whole area had become a busy commercial and high end shopping district, though there is still a new university located in the midst.  I am not sure if there are still other MPH branches in Singapore now.

Next, Borders at Wheelock Place along Orchard Road Singapore, the bookstore I would visit whenever I passed through Orchard Road for shopping and entertainment. I had moved to Hong Kong, and visits to Singapore are usually rushed affairs, so there was little time to afford in any shopping mall. Borders was conveniently located with a decent selection of English language books. Borders closed in 2011. But there’s Kinokuniya at Ngee Ann City along Orchard Road with a bigger selection. Even though I can’t read the foreign language books, I like to walk between the book shelves with the Japanese, German and French language novels after I am done with the much larger English and Chinese sections. The Singapore section, though modest, allow me to glance quickly who gets published in Singapore. Once, I texted my ex-schoolmate to let him know his poetry book is not at Kinokuniya, and I hope that indicated his books were sold out. Kinokuniya was the only book store in Singapore in which I could get lost. It had to reduce its area and footprints since some years ago. Kinokuniya’s oldest branch in Singapore at Liang Court had closed, but this small branch means nothing to me as I had visited it only once. Its location at Liang Court was probably due to the larger Japanese population living and settling nearby.     

To bridge Singapore and Hong Kong, I’ll talk about Page One next. I could not remember whether the first Page One store I stepped into was the Times Square Hong Kong store or the VivoCity Singapore store. It was branded for design books, and I was awed by this brand although I didn’t read design books at the time. (I browse through them very occasionally now.)  Page One stores in Singapore closed in 2011.  In 2016, Page One stores in Hong Kong city area closed, because, I think, the revenue could not cover the rent. Then the airport branches closed next, but there was more speculation on the reason of this closure. Page One closing its door in both Hong Kong and Singapore was saddening for me. Popular bookstore chain, probably still going strong in Singapore, also exit Hong Kong early this year.

Book Attic, at one time located in Central, then Wanchai. It was the only second hand bookstore in Hong Kong I knew at that time which would arrange the books neatly enough for me to figure out where to look for what I was looking for. It was comfortable despite its small area, hidden in a quiet corner so I could feel that I have escaped from the city. If I could enjoy a long lunch break from the office, I would go to Book Attic instead of Dymocks, which was more conveniently located for me. Book Attic no longer sells books, but runs a book binding business. I don't know where the Attic is.  

Last but not least, Samuel French bookstore. I finally managed to figure my way around Los Angeles and made my way to the bookstore by subway, bus and foot or feet.  I had just one visit before the store closed. I did not make it to the London store before its similar fate to its sibling in US. I don't know from where Samuel French is running its online business now.  During my few visits to London, I bought drama texts from National Theatre London bookstore. 

Over the years, I get more fickle minded on what I read. I’ll buy or borrow a book needed to finish a course assignment, but I would run out of time and settle for quick reading of hit articles returned from Google search engine, and proceed to the next book because of another area or topic on which I have taken an ephemeral fancy that didn’t last long enough for me to finish reading even one book on that topic.   More often, I get distracted into reading a novel which has been adapted for a film or a theatre, or selected for a book club or reading group, or recommended by a KOL.

I am also more conscious of the time spent browsing randomly the books at a bookstore could be better spent on finishing one more chapter of one of the five or eight books I am following. Stores are less captivating now, and I get persuaded to utilize digital channels for my purchase orders. After all, the amount of money spent on delivery may not even exchange for a meal.  And what can replace physical interaction with the staff at a store? Why, digital or virtual interaction on social media, of course. I have not met Albert Wan of Bleak House Books, but he "keeps in touch" every other day with a post or two on Facebook, even when Bleak House is closed on a precautionary basis to reduce the risk of Covid-19 infection. 

Anyway, I still value the brick and mortar bookstore, where I could escape and hide away momentarily from the hustle and bustle, the fury and worry.  

The Buried Giant

The Buried Giant, published in 2015, is the latest of 8 novels from Kazuo Ishiguro. The settings is the medieval time period after King Arthur's reign. It's imaginative to write about the final days of Gawain, an Arthurian knight. Gawain and a young Saxon warrior Wistan are at cross purposes except for helping an old couple, Arl and Beatrice on a journey to visit their son. Arl and Beatrice could not remember the past due to a mist which shroud everything from the eyes as well as the mind.

The novel touches lightly on (i) suppressing memories of past violence and bloodshed so that there would be no desire for vengeance and peace could be attained. Such suppression takes away all memories, be they good or bad, for all people. (ii) devotion, for lack of a better word. The devotion between husband and wife (Arl and Beatrice), master and servant (Arthur and Gawain), teacher and protege, (Wistan and Edwin) are quite touching, but there seems to be blind loyalty, and clouded judgment in some of the devotion.

I would classify The Buried Giant as fantasy novel. (I find it hard to classify three of his other novels which I have read). I have always like Ishiguro's language. However, The Buried Giant compared to his other works is more tedious to read, due to repetition as Arl and Beatrice keep checking what more each other could recall, and how tired all the old folks are from their ordeal. Still, I am glad I finished reading it as it is quite a good story. And it's Ishiguro's mastery of language that leads to the intrigue in the ending. One ponders on whether to trust the boatman, and the intentions of Axl and Beatrice.

I like this review of The Buried Giant.
http://mookseandgripes.com/reviews/2015/03/05/kazuo-ishiguro-the-buried-giant/

Top Girl by Caryl Churchill

Top Girl is a three-act play written by Carly Churchill during the '80s.

In the first act there is a dinner party celebrating Marlene's job promotion to managing director. However the guests were fictitious females from the past, likely famous or notorious during their times, having accomplished something unconventional.  They include Isabella Bird from the 19th century who had travelled extensively, Lady Nijo from the 13th century who was an Emperor's courtesan and later a Buddhist nun, Dull Gret, the subject of the Brueghel painting, Dulle Griet, in which a woman in an apron and armour led a crowd of women charging through hell, Pope Joan, who disguised as a man and was briefly a Pope, and Patient Griselda, the obedient wife whose story is told by Chaucer in 'The Clerk's Tale' of The Canterbury Tales. Only Marlene is a person from the present time. There was nothing in the text explaining whether the other figures were ghosts or were risen from the dead. A silent waiter served them food. 

The women recounted their experience. They talked usually about their husbands and families, but Marlene was silent about hers. The women's lives were generally centered on their husbands or lovers. As we moved into the second act, we saw the sharp contrast between how women today had a job or career while women in the past did not.

In the second act, first scene, female job-seekers visited the employment agency run by Marlene in London. Through the interviews conducted by Win and Nell with the job-seekers, we saw the optimistic aspirations of the applicants for their careers. In the second scene of the second act, twelve-year-old Kitty and sixteen-year-old Angie were having their girl talk in Angie's home. Angie's mother, Joyce, forbade her to go to the movie with Kitty until she had cleaned up her room. Angie refused, and got dressed up for the movie. Angie had shared with Kitty that she might visit her aunt Marlene in London.  In Act Two, Scene Three, Angie showed up at Marlene's agency unannounced, and asked to spend the night with Marlene. She admitted to Marlene that Joyce was unaware that she had come to London.

In Act Three, the scene moved to Joyce's home. The time was a year before Scene Two. Marlene visited Joyce after an absence of six years. There were tension between them as they defended their choice of lives. Joyce took up a few cleaning jobs to support the family. Marlene essentially believed that one should work hard, fought every opportunity, and get on with moving ahead. Joyce however explained that options were unavailable to her, and remarked that Marlene could not have known how others lived their lives when Marlene did not come home regularly to visit her parents, her sister and her niece. Marlene felt that she was unwelcome when she had made the effort to come by. They also disagreed on what and how the prevailing social classes and middle classes should do in their social and economic pursuits. We realised that Angie was really Marlene's child, brought up by Joyce when Marlene left home to pursue her dreams.

Top Girls could stand without the first act with the dinner party.  This act could emphasize that Marlene, in her pursuit of her career, did not even have a close circle of friends in her life. rom the third act, we see that Marlene gave up her daughter and left her with Joyce as Joyce had offered to look after Angie. Marlene was not fighting to have Angie back in her life.  Marlene and Joyce are sharp contrast in that the former was willing to pay the price with estrangement from her family to pursue her freedom, while the latter sacrificed her freedom to care for her aged parents and young child. The juxtaposition of females' way of lives in modern societies with past lives in more patriarchal societies brings out that one had to make a choice of what one wants, and be ready to compromise and forfeit other important things for that one thing to get to the top.  But with so much desires, no one could feel fulfillment even after reaching the top.

The play text comes with a page that explains the notation used for the point of interruption, and the point of continuation. I appreciate the care given in planning how the dialogue and lines intercut. At the dinner party with a group of women busy talking, the continuation indicator helps to reduce confusion on who is 'following' or responding to who.

Plain Girl by Arthur Miller

Plain Girl is a novella written by Arthur Miller and published in the 90s. More known for his plays, this is my first reading of Miller's fiction in prose.

Janice Sessions is the protagonist of Plain Girl. She did not consider herself beautiful. She wrote in her notebook, "It isn't that I feel positively unattractive - I know better. But that somehow I am being kept from anything miraculous happening to me, ever."  She had some affection for her father, yet she had left his ashes at a bar. She was upset by the loss for only a short time, it seemed.

Janice felt that her first husband, Sam, had never really pursued her. "Sam was beneath her in some indefinite class sense, but that was part of his attraction in the thirties when to have been born to money was shameful, a guarantee of futility". Sam had his political views, is a Marxist, and an anti-Facist, believing that the Soviets would do the right thing. He left their home in New York to fight in the war.  Janice took courses with Professor Oscar Kalkofsky, who pointed out to her, "I think what you are saying is you don't feel you have ever made a choice in life. I know it because I see how much expectation there is in you." When Sam returned from the war, Janice felt that "their spirits had parted", and decided to leave him. When her brother Herman asked her what she wanted out of life, her response was," A good time."

Janice met a a blind musician Charles Buckman. Janice felt that Charles accepted her for what she was. He consoled Janice, "People have to believe in goodness. They're disappointed most of the time but in some part of his beliefs every person is naive. Even the most cynical. And memories of one's naivety are always painful. But so what? Would you rather have had no beliefs at all?"  They were happily married for fifteen years until Charles died in his sleep. "He had turned her inside out so that she looked out at the world instead of holding her breath for the world to look at her and disapprove."

The prose was beautifully written, conveying the ambivalent feelings the characters had of the political and social situation of the time, which is the period of the World Wars when Hitler, Stalin and Roosevelt were calling the shots.  "People her age, early twenties then, wanted to signify by doing good, attended emergency meetings a couple of times a week in downtown lofts or sympathizers' West End Avenue living rooms to raise money for organising the new National Maritime Union or ambulances for the Spanish Republicans, and they were moved to genuine outrage at Fascism." All that would be replaced by a newer generation and other ideologies. When Janice, in her sixties, watched the demolition of Hotel Crosby where she first met Charles, she "wondered at her fortune at having lived into beauty."

Amos Oz's Scenes from Village Life

Scenes from Village Life contains eight short stories of villagers living in Tel Ilan in the Manasseh Hills. This is the second book from Amos Oz which I have read.

In the story "Waiting", the village is thus described in the opening paragraph, "Tel Ilan, a pioneer village, already a century old, was surrounded by fields and orchards. Vineyards sprawled down the east-facing slopes. Almond trees lined the approach road. Tiled roofs bathed in the thick greenery of ancient trees, Many of the inhabitants still farmed, with the help of foreign labourers who lived in huts in the farmyards. But some had leased out their land and made a living by letting rooms, by running art galleries or fashion boutiques, or by working outside the village. Two gourmet restaurants had opened in the middle of the village, and there was also the winery and a shop selling tropical fish. One local entrepreneur had started manufacturing reproduction antique furniture. At weekends, of course, the village filled with visitors who came to eat or hunt for a bargain. But every Friday afternoon its streets emptied as the residents rested behind closed shutters." The story continued with how Benny Avni, the village mayor,  went searching for his wife, Nava, after receiving a note from Nava. The note said, "Don't worry about me." It was delivered by Adel, who saw Nava sitting on a bench near the Memorial Garden. By the end of the day, Nava did not come home, and Benny had no conclusion on what, if anyhting, had happened to her.

The first story is "Heirs". Arieh Zelnik had a visitor, Wolff Maftsir the lawyer. Maftsir claimed to be a relation, knew the family history of Zelnik, and proposed that both of them realise the value of the property that Zelnik stayed with his sick and deaf mother by appointing themselves as her guardian and sending her to a home. 

In the second story, "Relations", Gili Steiner, a family doctor at Tel Ilan, waited in vain for her nephew, Gideon Gat, at the bus stop where the bus from Tel Aviv arrived. Gideon's mother had sent him to convalesce for a few days with Steiner in the country. Steiner anxiously asked the passengers and the bus driver if they had seen her nephew, but no one had paid any attention to the few passengers that fit her nephew's description. Steiner was going home when she detoured to check again with Mirkin, the bus driver, to ensure that no passenger had dozed off and was locked up in his bus.  Mirkin let her have an overcoat which might be Gideon's and was left in the bus. She went home, called Gideon's and her sister's phone, and got no answer. She threw away the food she had prepared for Gideon, waiting with disappointment, and recalling more of the time that her nephew had spent with her at her home. 

In "Digging", the third story, Rachel Franco, a widow, looked after her eighty-six-year-old father Pesach Kedem. Kedem was bitter about life and full of complaints and criticisms for everyone. He was also untidy in appearance and sloppy in his habits.  He bore a grudge against Rachel who looked after him irreproachably every day, and he mixed her up with his wife Abigail, or his mother Hinde, both dead. He was suspicious of Micky the vet who visited occasionally. He was also prejudiced against the Arab student, Adel, who stayed in a shed which was part of the property Pesach and Rachel lived in, and who offered labour around the house in exchange for the free lodgings.  Pesach insisted that he heard digging under the ground at 2am. Rachel usually slept heavily, but she finally heard the digging at the end of the story.

In "Lost", an estate agent visited The Ruin, which used to belong to the late Eldad Rubin, who was a pride of the villagers for being a famous writer. Rubin's mother and wife had refused to sell the property, but Batya Rubin, Eldad's wife, had called the estate agent.  The estate agent visited The Ruin without making an appointment. Yardena Rubin opened the door and invited him in. Her mother and grandmother had gone to Jerusalem. She showed him around the enormous property, and at the end, left him in the cellar. 

In "Strangers", a seventeen-year-old young man, Kobi Ezra,  was in love with Ada Dvash, a woman in her thirties and deserted by her husband. She worked at the post office during the day and in the library from 7pm to 9pm. He waited for her outside the post office and walked with her to the library. At the library, he revealed his feelings for her, and she turned him down very gently. He left the library, certain that both of them would not want to speak to each other again and would avoid each other.
     
In "Singing", some of the residents, including the protagonists in the previous stories, gathered to sing at the Levin's home. Dalia and Avraham Levin had a son who had hidden himself beneath his parents' bed and shot himself in his head. One of the guests wandered around the Levin's home, and entered the bedroom where the tragedy had happened. 

The location of "In a faraway place at another time", the last story in the collection, is unknown. The settings is a swampy area in which the population was in decline, people interbred, were crippled and suffered from deformities and mental deficiency. The protagonist was sent there twenty or twenty-five years ago by the authorities, the Office for Underdeveloped Regions. He administered drugs and antiseptics, he disinfected the swamp, he distributed chlorine and DDT. He was the pharmacist, teacher, nurse, arbitrator. He waited in vain for his replacement to arrive.  His appeals to the governor went unheeded. One day, on top of the hill far away, the villagers saw a healthy and handsome strange man. He generated much curiosity, excitement, and then suspicion. This man disappeared shortly, and the story ended. I wonder if the strange man was some sort of Messiah.

Memorial Garden was mentioned in a few stories. Some of the characters reappeared or were mentioned in more than one stories. All the stories speak of loneliness or estrangement. Even if the character has someone to keep him or her company, the companion really wished to be elsewhere. The memories of the past and the routines of everyday life keep them going and bearing with the question of whether to be resigned with their lives.
 

Review of "Loving Vincent"

Vincent van Gogh aroses feelings of intrigue, loss, uneasiness, regret, and tragedy. He started to paint in his late twenties. He was prolific in producing 900 works in 8 years before his death at age 37.   

The first feature film that is painted, Loving Vincent , could be described as an adaptation of Vincent van Gogh's letters, his key paintings, and his artistic style. Life actors rehearsed and performed the scene, which is recorded and combined with various CGI and animation effects, and 80 painters who could reproduce van Gogh's style, re-appropriate some of his portraits and landscape works and produced more than 60,000 paintings for the film which involved more than 100 animators. 

Loving Vincent is structured like a detective story featuring Armand Roulin, a young man from Arles delivering an unopened letter that van Gogh wrote to his brother, Theo, shortly before his death. In the process, he discovers more and more about the artist, and begins to question if van Gogh was really insane and killed himself, and if he might have wanted to live after all.
  
It was extraordinary of Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman to pursue this project of the first oil-painted feature film on Vincent van Gogh.  Indeed, it would have been a different film if the film is made up of only computer-generated animations instead of artists' paintings. Although there is a jerkiness as one painting transitions to the next, I soon got used to it.  The jerkiness comes perhaps from the combination of different positions and density of swirls and dots, shades of colours, giving rise to a stronger sense of motion of the character, light and colour in each transition. The vivid play of colours does not portray cheerfulness but retain the melancholy. The frames of moving pictures feel like extensions of Vincent van Gogh's work, even though Van Gogh was not engaged in animation and film. 

The film provokes in me questions on what cause mental instability and suicidal inclinations, and how we might care for someone so they could move away from the brink of insanity.   Is society too quick and too eager to label a social outcast as mad?    

Things We Lost in the Fire

Synopsis of the Stories in the book "Things We Lost in the Fire" by Mariana Enriquez

The Dirty Kid

The narrator, a young woman, lived in Constitucion in her family home which once belonged to her paternal grandparents. It was a nice house, but Constitucion was considered a desolated, dangerous slum shied away by most.

Within sight from her window, she saw a mother and her child who lived on the streets. She had the bare interaction with the five-year-old child, but the mother was hostile to the narrator. The mother was obviously a drug addict, and both mother and child were under-nourished, dirty and smelly. They begged for money and food.

One evening, the child knocked on her door and told the narrator his mother was not with him. The narrator gave him food and took him out to buy him ice-cream. On the way back, they met his mother. The mother shouted rudely at the narrator to stay away from her child. The narrator was annoyed that her kindness to the child was not acknowledged.

The following day, both mother and child could not be seen. It was however normal for the people living on the streets to move around.

A week later, the narrator heard from the news that a child had been decapitated. The narrator was devastated thinking that the victim was the child who had knocked on her door earlier. She regretted deeply not showing more care and attention to the child. The body of the child was not claimed for a while because his mother was delivering a baby in the hospital. The dead child was not the child she thought it was, because it was a different mother.

There was a legend of Gauchito Gil who had practically been decapitated himself.

However, many days later, the drug addict mother turned up alone. The narrator forced her to reveal where her son was. Her reply suggested that she had surrendered the child to be sacrificed to the San la Muerte, the skeleton saint of death.

The narrator seemed to make up her mind to move. She had isolated herself by living in this house, and she had made up romantic stories about a neighbourhood that really was just shit, shit, shit.

She would leave the witch-narcos and shrines.

Suspense is gradually built up in the story. Once we read of the shrines to less-friendly saints, a sense of unease comes over.  The narrator and her friends are a part of this strange town where people are shattered by the gory murder. 

The Inn

Florencia went to Sanagasta with her mother and sister to stay in the family holiday home. Florencia met up with her good friend Rocio.

Rocio wanted to take revenge on Elena, the local innkeeper at Sanagasta, for firing her father Mario who worked as a tour guide. Rocio planned to sneak into the guest rooms, tear the mattress and hide meat inside.

As Florencia and Rocio were committing the deed, they suddenly heard the sound of a car and truck, and people pounding on the shutters with something metallic, running steps of many feet thudding around the Inn and the cries of men. and headlights of truck or car shining into the room where the girls were. The girls were so frightened that they screamed. Elena and her guard appeared and found the girls. However Elena insisted that they had appeared only because the girls were screaming, and there were no other noise and no other people.

Was the Inn being guarded by something ?

The Intoxicated Years

The lives of three girls, Andrea, Paula, and the narrator, during their high school years from 1989 to 1994.  The economy of the country was bad. The adults worry over inflation and unemployment. Government ration the power and during the summer of 1989, electricity went off for 6 hours at a time because the country had no energy. Andrea, the most beautiful of the four, changed her boyfriend regularly. The girls took drugs, drank heavily, and did not pay much attention to anything which could be considered fruitful or meaningful.  They met a rich girl Ximena and later Roxana. One of their adventures is to look for a girl with eyes full of hate, a girl they encountered once and who had walked into the forest. They returned to this forest but could not find the girl with the eyes full of hatred. The story ended with the girls hitting the latest boyfriend of Andrea, perhaps partly the effect of drugs and provocative rock music (Led Zeppelin). 

Adela's House

Adela had only one arm. Her parents said that she was born with the defect, but Adela told other stories of how she lost her left arm. Adela did not hide her stump. She was fearless of other children.

There was a deserted house with the window bricked up. It might have belonged to an old foreign couple with children fighting for the inheritance of the house. Yet no one had seen the couple or children. One day, Pablo, Clara and Adela went nearer the house. The house buzzes like a hoarse fly. The house vibrated. It felt like there was a frightening monster in the house and it must be kept there. The house was even telling stories to Pablo and Adela. 

Pablo became even more drawn to the house. He persuaded the two girls to enter the house. 

Adela disappeared in the house. Pablo was deeply affected by the disappearance and he went crazy and killed himself. Clara, the narrator and Pablo's sister, lived to tell the tale.

An Invocation of the Big-Eared Runt

Pablo is a tour guide. His favourite tour is the murder tour in which he tells stories of big criminals, the most notorious is the Big-Eared Runt who murdered children.

He wondered over the recent hallucination. He saw the apparition of Big-Eared Runt and he got a bit uneasy about it, though he would not tell anyone his apparition. He reasoned that this could be because Big-Eared Runt's victims were small children, and he recently had a baby. His wife had changed completely since the baby was born. She became quite obsessive over the best for the baby, demanding Pablo to look for higher-paid jobs for a better living environment in a bigger house.

As the story progressed, I wonder whether the apparition would become real and even kill Pablo's baby, but this was not in the story. The story ended with Pablo's finding a nail, and was thinking of having this nail as a prop for his story telling of the Runt driving a nail into a dead boy's head.

Spiderweb

The narrator travelled to Paraguay by car with her cousin Natalia and her husband Juan.  Both women thought that Juan was a terrible bore and constantly complaining about everything and unable to help with anything.  Natalia told the narrator her current boyfriend had a plane. During one plane ride, she saw a burning house but her boyfriend did not see it.

The car broke down, and they met driver and passenger of another truck. Natalia hitchhiked with them to get help. The group put up at a hotel and had dinner and drinks together. Juan later disappeared.

End of Term

"We'd never really paid her much attention. She was one of those girls who don’t talk much, who don’t stand out for being too smart or too dumb and who have those forgettable faces. Faces you see every day in the same place, but that you might not even recognize if you ever saw them out of context, much less be able to put a name to them. The only striking thing about her was how badly she dressed."

Marcela saw a small man who get her to hurt herself. She pulled out her hair, her eyelashes, fingernails. She cut herself on her face. With these incidents, she was not welcome to school. The narrator visited her at her home. Marcela told the narrator that the man would also get the narrator to do the things that Marcela had done to herself. The narrator left. On the bus, the narrator massaged her thigh until blood flowed out from a would she had inflicted by cutting herself with a box cutter.

No Flesh Over Our Bones

The narrator found a skull and brought it home. She named the skull Vera. She dressed it up with an expensive blond wig. She even got Vera necklace with colored beads and surrounded it with aromatic candles, and got coloured light bulbs to place in the sockets for eyes. She also decided to eat less and lose weight to have more protruding bones for herself.

Her boyfriend could not understand or accept her action and left her. He told her mother about her strangeness. When her mother visited, she lied to her mother that she was preparing for a Halloween party but she did not want to get into a costume. Instead she would bring along a voodoo tableau.  The narrator pondered over where she might find bones and built out the remaining skeletal frame for the skull.

The Neighbour's Courtyard

Paula and Miguel rented and moved into a house. On the first night, Paula heard loud pounding that frightened her a lot, but Miguel did not hear it.

Paula suffered from depression and took light medication. Paula visited a psychiatrist. Miguel had never shown any other kind of prejudice; it was directed exclusively toward psychiatrists, mental problems, madness. Miguel had admitted to her that in his opinion, except for serious illnesses, all emotional problems could be solved by force of will.  Her mother Monica brought Paula's cat over to the new place the following day. The second night, Paula saw a small man sitting at the foot of her bed. When she looked more carefully, it ran away, and Paula thought that perhaps it was her cat Elly.

Paula is thinking of leaving her husband after she finished her degree course if there is no improvement in their marriage life.

One day she saw a naked child with a chain to his ankle in her courtyard. But when she brought Miguel to see the child, and the child was not there, they had a row over her hallucination.

Miguel treated her like the crazy woman she had never been, for a different reason: because he’d never forgiven her for abandoning that little girl. He’d never been able to get that image out of his mind: the sobbing in the night, the broken ankle. Or the image of Paula laughing, her mouth reeking of beer. That was why he no longer desired her. Because he’d seen a side of her that was too dark. He didn’t want to have sex with her, he didn’t want to have children with her, he didn’t know what she was capable of. Paula had gone from being a saint—the social worker who specialized in at-risk children, so maternal and selfless—to being a sadistic and cruel public employee who neglected the children while she listened to cumbia and got drunk; she’d become the evil directress of a nightmare orphanage.

Paula decided to trepass into her neighbour's house in search of the boy with the chain. The house was dirty, the pantry had rotten meat, there were strange anatomy drawings on paper, and wall filled with writings. Paula ran home in fright. At her home, she saw the child who had teeth like saw. He bit into Elly, killed and ate the cat.  He held Paula's house key in his hand.

Under the Black Water

Two young men, Yamil and Emanuel,drowned in a river of very polluted water that passed through a Villa Moreno slum. They were pushed into the Ricachuelo river by law enforcement officer. Yamil's body had been found, but not Emanuel's. A pregnant girl visited the district attorney, Marina Pinat, to let her know that Emanuel was in Villa Moreno, and demanded payment for her information.

District Attorney visited the slum. The taxi-driver would not even enter the slum, but stopped outside it. The slum is filled with overweight but malnourished women and deformed children.

"There were families who lived by the water and drank it, and though the mothers boiled it to try to get the poison out, their children got sick, consumed by cancer in three months, with horrible skin eruptions that ate away at their legs and arms. And some of them had been born with deformities. Extra arms (sometimes up to four), noses wide like felines, eyes blind and set close to their temples."

She walked into the church to look for the priest, Father Francisco.

"In place of the altar there was a wooden pole stuck into a common metal flowerpot. And impaled on the pole was a cow’s head. The idol—because that’s what it was, Marina realized—had to have been recently made, because there was no smell of rotting meat in the church. The head was fresh."

Father Francisco seemed to have become insane.

"The police started throwing people in there because they are stupid. And most of the people they threw in died, but some of them found it. Do you know the kind of foulness that reaches us here? The shit from all the houses, all the filth from the sewers, everything! Layers and layers of filth to keep it dead or asleep. It’s the same thing, I believe sleep and death are the same thing. And it worked, until people started to do the unthinkable: they swam under the black water. And they woke the thing up. Do you know what Emanuel means? It means ‘God is with us.’ The problem is, what God are we talking about?”  He grabbed her fun and shot himself.

Outside the church, there was a procession. "She ran between the precarious houses, through labyrinthine alleys, searching for the embankment, the shore, trying to ignore the fact that the black water seemed agitated, because it couldn’t be, because that water didn’t breathe, the water was dead, it couldn’t kiss the banks with waves, it couldn’t be ruffled by the wind, it couldn’t have those eddies or the current or that swelling, how could there be a swelling when the water was stagnant? Marina ran toward the bridge and didn’t look back and she covered her ears with her bloody hands to block out the noise of the drums."

Green Red Orange

A young man, Marco, locked himself up in his room and refused to see even his own mother living in the same house who brought him food and left it outside his door everyday.

Marco is a hacker. The narrator had never seen him, but connected with Marco through online chat program. Marco's online status, either a green or red or orange dot, is the indication of Marco's existence. Marco talked to the narrator about the deep web where sinister and illegal activities are promoted.  Marco wanted to probe into the The Real Rape Community. "They have no rules. They starve kids to death. They force them to have sex with animals. who kicks them. Then they rape her until they kill her. The video of the torture is for sale, and so is an archive of her screams that don’t sound like anything human and are unforgettable. And I want to learn about the RRC,” he says.

“Today I read an article about people like you,” I wrote to him one morning at dawn. “You’re a hikikomori. You know about them, right? They’re Japanese people who lock themselves in their rooms and their families support them. They don’t have any mental problems, it’s just that things are unbearable for them: the pressure of university, having a social life, those kinds of things. Their parents never kick them out. It’s an epidemic in Japan. It almost doesn’t exist in other countries. Sometimes they come out, especially at night, alone. To find food, for example. They don’t make their mothers cook for them like you do.”

The narrator was in contact with Marco's mother. The narrator thinks that when Marco stopped talking to her online , she would lie to his mother that she and Marco are still talking online.

Things We Lost in the Fire

A woman who had been burned and disfigured appeared regularly in the subway to beg for money to survive. She would tell the story of how her husband burnt her and claimed that she did it herself. The husband was convicted only after she recovered sufficiently to tell that it was her husband who tried to murder her. She would touch and kiss other passengers in the subway. SOme passengers would leave the subway to avoid her.

There were other women mentioned in the story with similar encounter. At first, the men were burning the wife or girlfriend to control or punish them. Later, the women decided to burn themselves to make a statement. When all women are burnt and scarred and ugly, there would be no pretty women for the men to desire.