Limbo<\/span><\/i>\u00a0was published in 2020 by Seix Barral; the Portuguese translation appeared recently with Brazilian publisher Editora Peabiru.\u00a0The English-language rights are available.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n From <\/b>Limbo: A Story of Horror in the Caribbean<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n If you\u2019d been a dog, Thom Yorke<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019m every nightmare you\u2019ve ever had. Stephen King<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n THE SISTERS IN DUPLICATE<\/b><\/p>\n The house is large. It has high ceilings and a long spiral staircase leading to a second floor with five rooms. The doors are red and numbered with Roman numerals drawn in black paint. There are only two unnumbered rooms, and they\u2019re occupied by The Sisters in Duplicate:<\/span><\/p>\n Ninfa and Orfa Kowalska arrived in Ciudad Crisantemo in the late 1940s with their father, a poor Polish peasant who\u2019d already spent some time in Spain. When the inhabitants of Crisantemo learned that the Kowalskis were related to a religious mystic, the one beatified by the Polish pope himself, they welcomed them with a devotion closer to servility than courtesy.<\/span><\/p>\n Although it was not until 19** that the Vatican officially printed the diary of Saint Mar\u00eda Faustina Kowalska in its Spanish version, many in Ciudad Crisantemo were already aware of the life and work of the nun; also of the visions of heaven and hell that the future saint had during the first years of her life. But it was her terrifying revelations about Limbo that would turn this family of immigrants into intermediaries for the salvation of those little souls who died unbaptized in the unhappy and devastated Crisantemo, and also in the surrounding areas.<\/span><\/p>\n More than a haunted house\u2014as many gullible people insist on calling it\u2014the place looks like a gigantic and ruinous pigeon loft. There\u2019s also something birdlike in the two sisters\u2019 countenance, perhaps that\u2019s why they always wear veiled hats that cover half their face.<\/span><\/p>\n The Kowalska twins: Orfa was born first; Ninfa came out right after. They were extremely thin with albinism, and must be over seventy years old.<\/span><\/p>\n Everyone knows what goes on inside that big house, and no one is shocked. Were it not for them, according to some faithful, the small town would have been sunken in darkness for decades now.<\/span><\/p>\n Crisantemo is located north of La Naci\u00f3n. It\u2019s a quiet place, with only a hundred inhabitants, a coastal settlement where immigrants arrived escaping the devastation of the Second World War. The nearest town is three hundred miles away. It was a kind of Babel, where families and people of different nationalities lived together peacefully.<\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s nothing in its architecture worthy of being mentioned; perhaps the church. In a place as desolate as this, it was impossible to miss the enormous cross made from the bones of seafaring birds resting atop the dome, which on certain nights with a full moon make the temple look like the most terrifying of places.<\/span><\/p>\n * * *<\/span><\/p>\n (September 19**)<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhen did it die? Age? Sex?\u201d asked Orfa, the one who was born first.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cA few hours ago,\u201d said The Man, handing her a dead child wrapped in onion skin paper.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt was born today,\u201d said The Woman.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll take care of everything, rest assured,\u201d said Ninfa.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t get to baptize it,\u201d The Man let slip.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s obvious; you\u2019re here for a reason. What name were you planning to give it?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe never considered a name,\u201d answered The Woman, whose face was covered with white chiffon.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cNever,\u201d The Man added.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t cry!\u201d Ninfa ordered The Woman.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s forbidden; doing so hinders the transition of the unbaptized, attachment is the worst thing a human being can develop for someone, only animals deserve such a thing,\u201d added Orfa.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAgreed?\u201d asked Ninfa.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAgreed,\u201d said The Man.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou haven\u2019t told us the sex of the baby.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s going on? Why don\u2019t you say anything, and why do you look at each other like that?\u201d Orfa asked.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSee for yourselves,\u201d said The Man, who brought both hands to his head and then swallowed a fistful of salt that he took from one of his pockets.<\/span><\/p>\n The Sisters unwrapped the small body and brought a candlestick close to the sex of the creature.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cLeave the money and get out,\u201d Orfa said.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cCan we say goodbye to…\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d said The Sisters in Duplicate in chorus.<\/span><\/p>\n Orfa ordered the baby to be taken to Room I and asked her sister to rub some pork oil on the little one\u2019s forehead. Ninfa went up the spiral staircase, entered the room and, before placing the child in the cradle, looked again at the genitals of the new houseguest; the image of two insects copulating in mid-air came to her mind, she left the room in silence.<\/span><\/p>\n During dinner, The Sisters didn\u2019t talk much. Ninfa stewed a dried wasp honeycomb that Orfa had collected that morning from the leafy calabash tree.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never seen anything like that,\u201d said Ninfa.<\/span><\/p>\n Her sister ignored her and continued chewing on the stew, picked up a cloth napkin, and took a sip from the glass of boiled tree tomato juice.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cBut I\u2019ve heard that almost every time such phenomena occur, it\u2019s the result of a curse, or worse: the product of incest,\u201d she added.<\/span><\/p>\n Orfa paused, looked at her annoyed and struck the table forcefully with the palm of her hand, causing the gas lamp to shake. Orfa\u2019s shadow cast on the wall by the light of the wick and other candles scattered about the room grew terrifyingly large.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt is what it is, period!\u201d she shouted. \u201cOur mission is different here; neither one of us may judge anyone who comes to us. We\u2019ve seen much worse creeping around in the corners of this place; we\u2019ve seen abominations crawl out of the cracks. I don\u2019t know why it shocks you to see two elements together in the same body that perhaps should never have been separated.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a monster!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSilence!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The Sisters resumed their dinner. A small black shadow slid beneath the table, reached Ninfa\u2019s feet, and then climbed up into her lap.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cLook who\u2019s here today! The restless Biscuit.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Orfa smiled at the sight of her little cat twiddling with her sister\u2019s blouse.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou haven\u2019t been home for almost a year. You\u2019re a fidgety boy, look at you, you haven\u2019t changed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The animal looked at Ninfa, brought its paw up to the woman\u2019s gaunt cheek, and stroked it. She continued to talk to it like a child:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYour whiskers are soaked with blood, as usual. Biscuit, Biscuit, don\u2019t stray so far from us, you naughty boy,\u201d Ninfa concluded. Her sister returned from the kitchen with dessert: candied grapefruit peels.<\/span><\/p>\n * * *<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWake up! Get up now!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n As a downpour fell, flashes of lightning lit up Ninfa\u2019s room. When she sat up, she saw her sister at the foot of the bed. Despite the thunder and the wind battering the house, causing it to shake, the cries of a child could be heard clear as a bell. It was fifteen minutes past three in the morning.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s that I hear, Sister?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe guest in Room I.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOh, my God! That can\u2019t be, it can\u2019t have woken up, it hasn\u2019t been 24 hours since its death.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThey brought that devil\u2019s spawn to us alive; they got rid of it like an old piece of junk. I had a feeling that man would only bring misfortune to this city. I knew it from the moment he opened his mouth at that dinner with Father Dixon. I was certain there was something dark around him; his child is proof.<\/span><\/p>\n The rain began to subside. The child\u2019s cries grew louder.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll trade you it for two spools of thread and a silver needle,\u201d said a voice seeping through the cracks in the ceiling in Ninfa\u2019s room.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis one can\u2019t be yours! Go away!\u201d Orfa shouted.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cGive me its eyes, and I\u2019ll give you a black pearl,\u201d said another, sharper voice.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI have nothing to give; I just want it to suckle from my teat,\u201d said a third voice.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cGet along!\u201d said The Sisters in chorus. A sound like wings beating against each other could be heard for a few seconds on the roof, and the child\u2019s cry was the only sound that echoed through the house.<\/span><\/p>\n * * *<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cRock the cradle so it will go to sleep,\u201d Orfa suggested.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s it; it must be hungry.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n They covered it with a fuzzy blanket and went downstairs to the kitchen together to prepare some milk. The newborn was looking into Ninfa\u2019s eyes; the crying stopped, and with its hand it reached out to touch its hostess\u2019s pointy nose.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re a little bastard,\u201d said Ninfa; the child proffered something akin to a smile.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHere, give it some of this.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Orfa handed her a bottle of warm milk.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cDid you put a little salt in it?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a child, not a puppy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The Sisters sat on the threadbare red velvet furniture in the living room. Ninfa put the bottle in the baby\u2019s mouth, and it began to suckle with desperation. At times she looked away from the baby\u2019s face to the imposing portrait of Saint Faustina Kowalska that hung on a wall in the room.<\/span><\/p>\n For as long as she could remember the painting had been resting on that wall of the house. She still remembers her father\u2019s stern voice telling her that she should be proud that there was someone close to divine in the family.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe have to figure out what we\u2019re going to do with that child,\u201d Orfa said bitterly.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHow ironic! We\u2019re certain what to do when they come to our house dead and unbaptized, but this one has got us in check,\u201d said Ninfa as she gazed at the child, now asleep in her arms.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s wait until morning. We\u2019ll figure out what to do. Now,\u201d Orfa suggested, \u201clet\u2019s go back to bed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Translators\u2019 Note Limbo: A Story of Horror in the Caribbean is a novella in three acts, queering gender and genre in the style of the new Latin American gothic. This dramatized multi-narrative is a twisted Bildungsroman that exposes the untold horrors of a phantom Caribbean town and the collective othering of an intersex child, culminating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":26981,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4167],"tags":[4658],"genre":[],"pretext":[],"section":[],"translator":[],"lal_author":[3521],"class_list":["post-27146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sobre-la-traduccion","tag-numero-27-es","lal_author-john-templanza-better"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27146"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27623,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27146\/revisions\/27623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27146"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=27146"},{"taxonomy":"pretext","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pretext?post=27146"},{"taxonomy":"section","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/section?post=27146"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/translator?post=27146"},{"taxonomy":"lal_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lal_author?post=27146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}George Henson and Michelle Mirabella<\/span><\/h5>\n
\n<\/span><\/i>they would\u2019ve drowned you at birth.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/i>I\u2019m your worst dream come true.
\n<\/span><\/i>I\u2019m everything you ever were afraid of.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nTranslated by George Henson and Michelle Mirabella<\/span><\/h5>\n
<\/h6>\n
Main image: from the cover of the Spanish-language edition of <\/span>Limbo: Una historia de horror en el Caribe<\/span><\/i> (Seix Barral, 2020)<\/span><\/h6>\n
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\nA 2021-2023 Tulsa Artist Fellow, <\/span>George Henson<\/b> is the author of eleven book-length translations, including Cervantes Prize laureate Sergio Pitol\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>Trilogy of Memory<\/span><\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/span>Carnival Triptych<\/span><\/i>, all with Deep Vellum Publishing, as well as fellow Cervantes laureate Elena Poniatowska\u2019s short story collection\u00a0<\/span>The Heart of the Artichoke.\u00a0<\/span><\/i>His\u00a0most recent translation is Abel Posse\u2019s memoir\u00a0<\/span>A Long Day in Venice<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/h5>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Foto-de-traductora_Michelle-Mirabella.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
\nA 2022 ALTA Travel Fellow, <\/span>Michelle Mirabella<\/b> is a literary translator whose work appears in\u00a0the HarperCollins\/Amistad anthology <\/span>Daughters of Latin America, The Arkansas International<\/span><\/i>,\u00a0<\/span>World Literature Today<\/span><\/i>,\u00a0<\/span>Latin American Literature Today<\/span><\/i>,\u00a0and elsewhere. A finalist in\u00a0<\/span>Columbia Journal\u2019s<\/span><\/i>\u00a02022 Spring Contest in the translation category and short-listed for the 2022 John Dryden Translation Competition, Michelle is an alumna of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre and the Bread Loaf Translators\u2019 Conference.<\/span><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"