Eastern Freezer

By Mireya Robles

The title of this anthology of stories by Mireya Robles, Eastern Freezer, is that of the first story in the book, which sets the tone for the entire collection. It concerns life in a world where feelings have disappeared and emotional communication between human beings has been abolished. The themes of uprooting and alienation are familiar in Robless work, and here they find a poetic expression in stories with a variety of settings, such as The Parade, in which a lonely man in a city apartment hallucinates about a procession of robot-like creatures from the past, or The Floating City, possibly set in a Cuba of oneiric quality, at the end of which the protagonist, like an automaton, follows incomprehensible orders. In most of these tales the heroes remember a former, richer life and suffer at the loss of feeling, the meaninglessness and the absurdity of the present. Occasionally, one of Robless characters finds fulfillment, generally a child who discovers the world and once, a lover who, symbolically, finds her corresponding half. These stories of Mireya Robles are cry of pain against a dreary and indifferent world and a plea for human warmth.

Anna Diegel
Translator and Literary Critic

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Jan 21, 2010
• ISBN: 9781466937628

Mireya Robles

Born in Guantánamo, Cuba, Mireya Robles has published three novels and two books of poetry as well as articles, short stories and poems in literary magazines in about 20 countries. She has received literary awards in the USA, México, France, Italy and Spain. Interviewed on radio and TV in Miami, New York, Buenos Aires, Madrid and Durban, South Africa as well as in the documentary film Conducta Impropia/Improper Conduct directed by Oscar winner Néstor Almendros. This documentary received the Human Rights Award in Grenoble, France and has been televised in France and Spain and presented in movie theaters in New York, Miami, Puerto Rico, Colombia and Venezuela.

Book preview

Contents

Eastern Freezer

The Parade

My Heart Goes Out to the Blacks of Harlem

Old Frank

The Death of the Tiger

Creme De Menthe and Soda

Annie

The Puddle

Grand Central

The Other Half of Time

The Train

The Vampire Who Gives Blood

The Floating City

Eastern Freezer

I leant back in my seat and tried to track these quick flows of consciousness that crossed my brain of plastic tubes, without timidity, but with an almost ethereal lightness. I know that I died in 1973 when they were going to manufacture vegetable meat in Chile. I know that I died in 1973 when the latest news flash informed me that there was a flaw in Skylab. I was reborn yesterday and forty eight hours later -now days have forty eight hours- I have yet to emerge from my surprise at being alive. The year 2273, a double leap year, a year in which we have two Februaries. Two thousand, two hundred and seventy three. The numbers sound different. People choke as they speak. The strange sound of a bone rolling around and hitting against an empty, desolate, sloping passageway clatters in their windpipes. Speculation: the air has thickened and now sounds like hard cement. Speculation: the air has become solid. Speculation: their respiratory system has changed and they grind the air. Speculation: they aren’t suffocating, they have changed the way they breathe. Speculation: my respiratory apparatus, no, not apparatus, my respiratory system is inadequate for the purpose of breathing air. Speculation: they’re regulating my respiration.

My gaze skips quickly from one place to the next: I do not stare at my feet. Skip-skip-skip-skip. No, I am not connected in any way to anything outside myself. Speculation: remote control: no. No. No. No. Speculation: I am independent, I walk, I tire; I walk, I recover; I walk, I am surprised. On my own. For myself. For. Speculation: in myself. Speculation: modern lung. Speculation: in me. Speculation: alien to this world. No: in it. But not in control of myself.

There is no cold in the air. A fine heat. Breath. Steam. A dry steam. A contradiction, but I do not perspire. We interrupt this programme to bring you an important announcement: Skylab… We interrupt… Skylab… the announcement… the telephone number is 343-1111… no… in that one they give the time and the temperature… Skylab… the announcement… the telephone number is 869- and the other numbers… who dials the number… my mouth does not move… this grunt is not my voice… the Skylab… this programme… heavy… heavy… dial the number… Sky… di… the num…

Yesterday at exactly ten o’clock they told me that I had been alive for about three hours but that one always took some time to regain consciousness. I thought… No. I heard without thinking. I remembered nothing. I headed towards the door where they gave me absolution. No, that’s not the word: where they discharged me. And my rehabilitation? And my training? And my possible traumas? Quickly, while she took my papers from the file: Psychology no longer exists. The words are still the same. There are many new words, but the old ones, those ones mean the same things. No. Not philology. And that course of rapidus-rápido-rabdo-raudo. And isn’t raudo the most vulgar word because it evolved more than rápido? No. The course: a waste. The course: obsolete. Language does not change because the means of diffusion kept us all speaking the same across distances and time. New words: there are those. She didn’t even say this to me as if it were serious information. Only as a way to occupy herself with something before reaching the counter from the filing cabinet to have me sign a certificate of invalidation of death and an authorization of the validity of my birth certificate. You are reintegrant 47111. A metal badge. But it’s better to tattoo the number onto yourself. On the sole of your foot: 47111. Your brain is new. It should work well. But one way of not worrying is to take precautions: reintegrant 47111. We do not force anyone. Everyone knows what has to be done. The law is precaution and precaution is the law. The tattoo machine: in Hall Eleven on the second floor. Automatic machines. The ink is black. No, blue. No, dark. Blue-black. Enter the number 47111. Five seconds. Yes, you can walk immediately afterwards. Oh, sign the register. Year 2273. Reintegrant 47111. No, no letter. Just 47111. Yes, everyone will know. There is only one reintegrant with that number. No. There is no over-population. No. There are no more births. Everyone is a reintegrant. The world population is now at 47111. Not inhabitants, reintegrants. The others: they’re all in freezers. You came from the Eastern Freezer three days ago. Yes, in our transporters. Now you can pull the loading sticker off the palm of your hand. I never give so many explanations. Go to Hall Eleven on the second floor. No, there is no identification paper. Just the number of your reintegration. Yes, tattooed. I never give so many explanations.

For some reason the idea of returning to the Eastern Freezer and never going to Hall Eleven on the second floor seemed attractive to me. Yes, my reintegration number