The Unravelled Frames

By Ariel Pytrell

THE UNRAVELLED FRAMES | They can’t see what is apparent

In the fourteen short-stories collected in this new 
book by Ariel Pytrell an ominous and sometimes ironic atmosphere permeates throughout. This would be nearly the only thing in common among these fantastic stories which, anyway, resist being labelled. The ineffable thing may be the main character in this ceremony called "book of fiction" or, perhaps better, "of visions."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Insepia
• Release date: Sep 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781507192009

Book preview

Contents

Prologue |

The Rendezvous |

Ydha’s departure |

Beltaine |

Metamorphosis 2.0 |

Seven and Eight |

The emotion pill |

Encleve prison |

Unravelling frames |

Variations of rendezvous |

Lady Araguen’s lookout |

Valpurgis |

Notos’ report |

Áhboleh |

The solitude of epigraphs |

For Andrea and Damián,

who have taught me

the mystery of brotherhood

| Foreword |

It is not hard to imagine someone reading these words, patiently combined on paper, even though we ignore the historical moment to which that reader belongs.

The accounts in this book are fictions or, rather, visions. Whatever the labels under which these tales might be classified, it is feasible to compare them with pictorial works. Perhaps the features of diverse painters such as Hieronymus Bosch or Vermeer, even Velázquez or Dante Gabriel Rossetti might be detected. And even an inspiring glint of Dalí can be discerned by some others, though the Spanish master is perceived as a representative of early Freudianism, so that the author of these fictions is not completely satisfied with that comparison.

The fabric of these stories can be linked to others interwoven by the same writer. Some day it will no longer be important to attach any signature to the tales to accomplish their destiny of being read. May these visions continue transforming the author until he disappears or changes into a point of a movement on the street of a certain century, either past or posthumous, or even a contemporary one.

Ariel Pytrell

|  THE RENDEZVOUS |

Nobody saw me leave, I know

Nobody’s waiting...

GUSTAVO CERATI, When the shaking is passed

––––––––

I was alone in this Paris where I had taken refuge for so many Marches. It was that certain look which remained in me and I couldn’t recover. I remained alone, with a listlessness which began to gnaw at my stomach.  Alone, with this crimson horizon tinged deep blue, surrounded by inhabitants who walked by like city shadows.

The evening sun brought out her green eyes surrounded by bare hints of wrinkles despite her nearing fifty. This is time, I murmured. Time is nothing. Only a kiss, a kiss from those same lips which seconds before had pronounced farewell. And Lucianne, because of her I speak, left walking through the same square in which we had met. I saw her backside departing in the twilight, her steps echoing, her look, her perfume which always reminded me of, well I’m not sure.  My sacrilegious instinct made me take a deep breath and walk to the bar Le Jardín d’Amilcar the one that lights up that same square, now darkening through the twilight and her back.

And I entered the bar.

––––––––

I entered the bar with the memory of her back, her lips, her eyes.  I sat at the little wooden table. My head continued to spin and the cigarette smoke obscured my view. I wanted a beer but the waitress was serving in the rear.  It took a while for me to realize what music was playing: El Flaco Spinetta.[i]It got my attention, but then, the bar’s cloud of smoke won out and the stridence pierced my ears.  Everything stunned and disturbed me.

The place was packed with young folks. The girls wore blouses with shoulder pads and enormous earrings. The boys wore tight fitting t-shirts tucked into their pants.  Their short sleeves were rolled carefullly up to the shoulder. I thought it was some retro Parisian Argentine’s bar, likely from Buenos Aires judging from the music which reflected the seventies and eighties. The reproduction of art and detail of the period surprised me. The nostalgia of the time, which nevertheless I had never been allowed to live, was inevitable. Exile is more obsession for a memory —I thought, or, I believe I thought, as I observed this human wave— than temptation for survival.

I needed a beer. Although the waitress passed by, she didn’t see me. So, I called her, a little irritated by the wait. With a gesture, she indicated I should be patient. I looked for a notice about the event on the red walls but there were only posters of Bowie, Genesis and Queen.  I felt a twinge in my stomach, a nearly imagined pain.

The waitress asked me in French if I felt ok, and what I would order.  She had leaned on the chair and I ran my eyes along her arms up to her face: her curly, towseled hair; her sky-blue painted eyelids, and her eyes... deep, yet prominent, lined in dark blue. I answered that I felt fine and asked for my beer. As she departed I observed the space she had left in the crowd; through which I spied a young lady who looked at me curiously from her table.

The exactness of that reproduction of the period had surprised me. But I was astounded by the similarity of the features of Lucianne to those of that curious young lady. Her laughing eyes warned of my confusion (an unexpected twinge in my toes, as though electrical impulses were prickling my legs). I looked around. The glamorous pictures distorted, Spinetta finished. I looked back at the young lady who was gesturing to me. Did she want me to follow her? Everyone around began to dance to the rhythm of Disposable Love by Virus,[ii] a new wave band.  I felt the desire to speak (my tongue tied up my voice like an electrical short). Time hurts, I found myself thinking, but that’s all that time is, the void spread out on the fabric of space.

The ache was like nostalgia for one’s homeland. That motherland which had expelled me like a mad cow, a Maenad without thyrsus or breasts. Suddenly I felt like the son of a wolf pack.  I can’t explain it.  It was a feeling both clear yet remote at the same time but I felt I did not belong; neither here nor there. Strange (my hands burned painfully as though the skin, the flesh, the bones were twisting —challenged by the force of gravity.) I saw how this young lady, the same age as was Lucianne when we had met, was leaving her table. The music was an echo of that original pain which now occupied my mental horizon, my heartbeats, the density of my blood. I feared she might escape. Then I followed her with my eyes. Oh, the void can feel...

All that, in a fraction of a second. I got myself up. Without realizing it, I bumped my shoulder against the waitress who was bringing my beer. I spilled foam on my shirt, my slacks, my shoes. I begged her pardon clumsily. I think the waitress said something to me. The girl who wanted me to follow her exited the main door (another intense electric shock, this time between my legs.) The atmosphere was suffocating. I breathed in some air and filled my lungs as well as I could (I felt the seizing of my abdominal muscles, bearing down as though I were to give birth to smoke.) I started walking among the smoke.  As I was leaving I stumbled over the young folks who were moving to the music which, anyway, I could no longer distinguish the beat. As I went, blood started dripping from my nose, as though a river flowed into the abyss. I smelled the iron in my blood, I felt it boiling. I felt each throb in my veins and arteries swinging inside this body struggling to get out by moving, moving, moving. I opened the door.

And went out.

It was night. I shivered in the fresh, clean air. As I had feared, the girl was not there. No one was there. I heard far off music. I realized that the street, which I had thought to be paved, was cobblestones. Le Jardin d’Amilcar had disappeared.  A pain in my chest. I turned my head just as I heard brakes. It moved so fast I nearly didn’t have time. The green Ford Falcon nearly crushed my feet.  Four guys with smoked glasses. Four garottes hit my stomach, my arms, my nose. A hood forced over my head, negating all contact with the world. I felt shunned, expulsed, separated. I felt tied to a notion, just a notion of myself, remote and strange as though I had never existed.  But one certain thought filled my mental image: green eyes, like a promise that nevertheless I began to miss, a name I did not yet know how to pronounce —the backside of a woman, a kiss (a bar, a square, a crimson evening) and I seem to recall that I complained. I was pushed into the