Good and Evil

Hello to all. Today, I want to write about Samanta Schweblin’s brand new collection of long short stories, translated as Good and Evil from the Spanish El Buen Mal. I will discuss two of the stories, first William in the Window and then An Eye in the Throat.

Samanta Schweblin has published two novels and, counting Good and Evil, three short story collections. She is originally from Argentina.  

The Spanish speakers among us might say, “Hold up! Good and Evil is not a literal translation of El Buen Mal.” I don’t know what to say. Ms. Schweblin must have approved the translation. El Buen Mal does seem more like The Good Bad Person, which would give the title a different meaning—stories about a bad person (or people) doing good things.

Hmm. It is of significance—story titles and book titles are not randomly picked. They have meaning.

Both stories under consideration—as well as most of Ms. Schweblin’s work—are written with a first-person narrator, an “I” who uses the simple past tense to tell the story as if it happened to her/him, a testimonial if not a confession, if you will. Of course, this is true with a lot of modern fiction, some might even say it’s a necessary part of the current style. We may take it for granted, but it does have some interesting implications.

The use of first-person narration establishes a persona, a character-narrator who is very self-conscious. Solipsistic come to mind.

"’Solipsistic’ describes someone or something that is extremely self-centered, to the point of believing only one's own mind is sure to exist. In a philosophical sense, it relates to solipsism, the theory that only one's own consciousness is certain to exist. In a more common, everyday usage, it describes extreme egocentricity, selfishness, and a focus on one's own needs and desires while disregarding others.”

Well, that is kind of a negative take on first-person narration, a blanket condemnation. But in these stories there is an isolation, a sense of an “I” struggling with loneliness. A sense that no one else—even intimates—really understands the narrator. The stories present an “I” suffering from a feeling of alienation and of how she/he resolves it, often by finding connection.

William in the Window begins with “I went to Shanghai a few months after we got the news of his illness and shortly before his treatment started.” The narrator is a writer trying to complete a novel who journeys from Buenos Aires to Shanghai to attend a writer’s retreat. Her husband, Andres, has cancer and may die. As explanation for leaving him, the narrator says, “I was frightened by the suspicion that if Andres died, I might die with him.”

This, best B, is the heart of the story. Can one survive the loss of a mate?

The narrator befriends another writer at the retreat, Denyce, and learns Denyce is very concerned about her elderly cat, William, who remains in Ireland with Denyce’s husband. At Denyce’s birthday party, Denyce learns William has died. She asks the narrator to return later and confesses she believes William is present there in Shanghai as a sort of ghost. The narrator initially reacts with disbelief but then hears the sound of a cat scratching.   

“Then I heard it. Clear and crackling, a slow scratch over soft fabric, like hundreds of tiny bubbles exploding in the air…My heart was pounding just like it had when I’d told Denyce about the marks Andres left in the bathroom.” (This refers to what the narrator said when asked why she loves Andres—she names a particular detail of their life together, that when he stands before the toilet to urinate, he touches the tiled wall, leaving a mark).

The narrator becomes quite upset, hearing William’s “call” in Shanghai.

“What if Andres was already dead but no one had been able to reach me? What if I was crazy too and I was losing all control over my life? What if I really did die when Andres died, but alone and twelve thousand miles away?”

Then she realizes: “The cat was dead but Denyce was still alive.”

She winds up talking to Andres on the phone, standing in the bathroom the way he does before the toilet. She wants to tell him that she’ll be on the flight home tomorrow.

Here’s the last line: “And then I saw him. William in the Kilkenny window, upright and attentive, finally turning toward me, recognizing me, granting me the certainty of his gaze.

Like Denyce, she will survive.

Thinking back to the story collection’s title, is the narrator a bad person doing good things? It’s a stretch to try to fit this story into that meaning, my friends. The narrator worries that she’s wrong to leave her husband, however, it’s never made explicit that she abandoned him, more that her departure was agreed on. Her husband never seems to blame her. We the readers get a sense of her inner turmoil, and most of all, her fear that with Andres’ death, her life will end. Denyce’s experience seems to reassure her and perhaps allow her to return to Buenos Aires, less afraid.

Till next time.

#GoodAndEvil #SamantaSchweblin #AlanBray