Eye in the Throat

The second story I’d like to discuss in Samanta Schweblin’s collection Good and Evil and Other Stories is called Eye in the Throat. It’s long, forty pages, a size that pushes it into novella range. Yes, please note the use of the present tense combined with first person narration.

It begins: “My father picks up the phone.” What follows is a description of how the narrator’s father, in 1990s Argentina, received phone calls during the night in which no one spoke. “The silence that calls him every night sticks with him throughout the day and he can’t help but think about Morris. About Morris and the three gas pump islands in the service station in General Acha, about the eighteen hoses hanging from their handles, about the nocturnal lights at that YPF station on the side of the flat, endless highway through the pampa.”

We the readers, on a first read through, immediately have questions: who is calling the narrator’s father, why is she/he not speaking? Who is Morris and what is the gas station in General Acha, and why does the father think about Morris when he listens in vain to the telephone?

This is classic story stuff, best B; questions raised at the beginning that draw the reader in, expecting answers. And they come, eventually.

There’s some nice foreshadowing about the family’s telephone which uses a lithium battery. Then, after a line break, the story establishes that it’s six months earlier and proceeds to tell the story of how the narrator, a toddler age boy, lost his ability to speak.

At the beginning of this post, I described the narration as first-person, but it is not quite so simple. A notable feature of this story is the presence of what some might call an omniscient narrator who can “see” into the heads of other characters. This, combined with the first person narration, creates some interesting effects. These excursions into other’s consciousness are often (not always) set off in italics. Thus, in a passage where the narrator describes being bathed by his father, the text reads, “I have to keep the water out, thinks my father…” The narrator might infer that his father thinks this, although it’s unlikely since he’s two years old, but the comment isn’t presented as an inference, but as a thought. Again, in a passage showing the family making a long car trip, we have, “Oh, the miracle at last, my mother thinks.” This occurs when the narrator finally falls asleep, a scenario any parent can relate to.

Then, when the family stops for gas, we have an extended scene from the father’s perspective. Here, the father encounters Morris, the gas station owner who is mentioned in the beginning, the person the father suspects of making the prank phone calls. (at this point, the reader has no reason to doubt this). Morris impatiently waits for his money which the father has trouble finding in his pockets. “And all you have to do now is find the money.” The father thinks. Morris says enigmatically: “Why am I always the one who has to wait for you?” This comment refers to a theme in the story, that the father keeps others waiting, often with disastrous consequences.

This is shown after the first paragraph break, when the narrator is injured. His father is watching him, but he, being a toddler, swallows the lithium battery for a digital clock while his father is momentarily distracted. In distress, he is rushed to the ER by his parents. The father “checks all the objects I have been playing with. He opens and closes the digital clock on the shelf…opens, but doesn’t close…the small black cover.”

An operation is done; the battery is removed, but the lithium has damaged the narrator’s throat.

The father blames himself, the mother apparently blames him too, they become estranged and eventually separate after another traumatic incident involving the narrator. While the family is traveling by car (and encountering Morris) the two-year old narrator disappears from the back seat while the parents are at the gas station. They don’t notice he’s missing till they are several miles down the road and turn back, searching for him frantically.

All these events are recounted by a narrator who is an adult in the future, a narrator who tries to make sense of why his father withdrew from him after they were very close.

But this narration does raise the question: How could a two-year old understand his family and himself the way an adult would? Is the story all about an adult looking back and imagining his very first years, perhaps relying on parents’ stories for the details?

I don’t think so, best B. It is our old friend the implied author who is telling the story, darting around and getting into the heads of the different characters.

Let’s stop there today and resume next week.

Suddenly, an audience member stands up and shouts: “Mr. Speaker! Mr. Speaker! I have a question. Why is this important? Who cares about the so-called implied author and the narrative style? What a snooze fest! If you want to read the story, just read it! Shut up and read it—and once is enough. Am I right?” The member looks around the audience, nodding, apparently trying to enlist others to his cause, but most people turn away, shaking their heads. Someone shouts: “Sit down!”

“Order! Order, please, I’d like to respond to this question—indeed, what is the point of this analysis?” (indistinct shouting) “All right, please settle down. It certainly is possible to read any work of fiction without being aware of the mechanics of how it is done. It certainly can be quite satisfying and sufficient to read a text once only, responding, perhaps, on an emotional level. One can read a book or short story and enjoy it without thinking why.

I do not mean to criticize this sort of reading but only to say there are different ways to read, ways that probably do require more than one reading. Eyes in the Throat provides an excellent example.

But I have been warned about making these posts over-long, so again, let me stop and pick up next time.

Till then.

#GoodAndEvil #SamantaSchweblin #AlanBray