The Backbone of Memory

By Braulio Tavares

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This e-book contains four of the twelve stories from A Espinha Dorsal da Memória, my collection which was awarded the "Prêmio Caminho de Ficção Científica" in Portugal, in 1989.

Not all the stories from that book have been translated into English, and the present electronic edition is meant as a sample of the original book. I hope that several friends of mine who cannot read in Portuguese will find here some material of interest. These are old stories, by chronological time, but I think that a story still unread is a story new.

Haunted may not be a story properly; some people would call it a fragment. Anyway, I chose it to be the opening text for the book, because it sets a tone, it evokes a mood of nocturnal disquietude, it alludes to images of beasts and of metamorphoses which will produce echoes in other stories further on.

Sympathy for the Devil was inspired by several discussions among members of Rio de Janeiro's "Science Fiction Readers Club" (CLFC) in which we debated how to concoct new variants of the old deal-with-the-Devil theme. I tried to give my version a psychological bent ("it's-all-inside-the-mind"), in an otherwise formulaic story.

Stuntmind may be my most translated story (it has so far appeared in English, French and Russian) and I think it reflects my reading of the so-called New Wave authors, back in the 1980s. Anyway, its most immediate inspiration was Damon Knight's "Stranger Station" (1956), which gave me one basic idea. In 1991, I attended Clarion Workshop, and when I mentioned that influence to him, he was generous enough to say: "It is a story many times told".

The Lightning-Mirror in the Eye of the Cyclone belongs, like Stuntmind, to the Intrusos series, a cycle of stories about mankind's contact with a powerful and elusive alien race. Enough background information is given in both stories so as to place them in context; they are standalone stories, and all they have in common is the presence of the unknowable Outsiders.

These are stories written more than thirty years ago, and they are able to stand by themselves only because of my discussions with my CLFC friends, and the feedback I got from them. I myself translated all the stories, and in some cases I had precious tips and feedback from my Clarion colleagues. I am grateful to them all for their ideas and their critiques.

Braulio Tavares

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bandeirola
• Release date: Nov 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9786599186431

Book preview

HAUNTED

IN THE OLD FARMHOUSE, the bats spent the night fluttering from the walls to the rafters and back.

Trembling, I shrank further inside the hammock, listening to the ruffling of the wings crisscrossing in the dark. I pulled the edges of the hammock around me, but I could do nothing against the teeth, the teeth that at any moment could pierce through the cloth, riveting in my back.

One day someone told me that bats were mice with wings. And during the nights that followed, when fear struck again, I imagined the darkness of the room being invaded by a huge, winged cat who would free me from the little vampires; I imagined the furious hunt, and the little black bodies, eviscerated, falling to the floor with a muffled thud.

But (I thought) once they are gone, the cat will still be around, like a flying jaguar, searching after more blood; and then I’ll have to dream up a dog, also winged, and also fierce; and after that another even bigger monster, and another even more monstrous; and the beasts will fulfill the carnivorous destiny of all beasts, and I will remain forever in the dark bottom of the hammock like an old woman spinning nightmares.

SYMPATHY

FOR THE DEVIL

THERE WAS A FLOWERPOT at the window sill, and Carlos’ elbow touched it when he leaned to look at the street. The pot wobbled and almost fell, but Carlos managed to hold it, in a quick reflex. He pushed it to the right, and felt sweat upon his forehead. He looked down at the street, ten floors below. It was dusk; the sidewalks were full of people and the traffic was already jammed.

Cattle, Carlos thought. Insects. Another working day is over, and they have a home to go back to. Robots. Viruses.

He felt a surge of remorse –– or maybe it was just his innate talent for convict labor; but anyway he left the window and went back to his desk. He stared at the old mechanical typewriter, where a nearly blank page stared back at him. Turning the platen with his left hand, he lifted the bail arm and re-read the last written sentences. He turned the paper to its former position, and sighed; then he put his hands on his thighs and stood, deep in thought, for several minutes. He must have thought about something unpleasant, because his body was suddenly shaken by a chill. He leaned against the swivel chair, stretched himself, and lit a cigarette.

I would gladly... he said, blowing a puff of smoke, and tapping the cigarette over the ashtray. He began again: I would gladly give my soul to the Devil, if he only could give me her body.

He savored the echoes of his own voice in the silent room, in that two-room rented flat where he had lived for the last six years, and which nobody else had entered in the last eleven days. He finished the cigarette, and, sitting straight in front of the typewriter, he put his fingers on the keyboard.

There was something written on the page.

He lifted the bail arm and looked again. Yes. In the middle of the page, some inches below the last written sentence, there were some typed letters.

HERE I AM.

What the hell is that?

He looked at the letters again, trying to make sense of them; and then he laughed. It must be some kind of joke, he thought; but it wasn’t. He turned the swivel chair; and there was a man sitting on the armchair, at the opposite side of the room.

He was dressed in black, but the clothes did not give him some Mephistophelian air; at best he looked like the leading vocalist of a gothic rock band, or like a 19th century poet who was just arriving from the funeral of his tuberculous fiancée. Carlos smiled when he thought this, and then the stranger smiled