And where was your little boy?
P turns over in bed and feels around for my hand
in the midst of the incommensurable solitude of
the earth, of the infinitely destroyed earth. I was
telling her that the first bomb was dropped
thousands of years ago, at 8:15 in the morning,
on a day that was probably not so different
from today. I was telling her as well that soon
the sun will rise and soon we will both wake up.
1
A slight curve, the enormous surface was reminiscent of
that of a planet photographed just before the space
probe reaches it, while above the blue darkness was
opening to reveal the stellar night sky. I know that
millions of years have passed since the time of this image
and I know that in this dream my name is Paul. I
was born in Quincy, Illinois, on February 23, 1915,
and this morning, as I went to get the newspaper that is left for me
each day in the front yard, I saw that the street
number of my house had been changed. I was surprised
it was winter in the middle of August, but I was going
through a terrible time so I just took it along with the
two envelopes that were under the door. I didn’t even
stop to look at the enormous newspaper headline and
I went straight to the section with the job ads. By the
time I reached the middle of the page I realized that
the entire newspaper was in Spanish. I couldn’t recall
learning more than three or four Spanish phrases in my
entire life: “Senorita, está usted bien?”, “bonito dia”, “en
México somos muy querendones”, but now I read it with
complete fluency as if it were my native tongue. I
looked, then, at the envelopes; both were addressed to
me, but the name of the street was not mine: Los
Españoles and the number 1974 were the same as what
I saw on the sign above the door. I look again at the
headline and I shudder. As I go out, I am pelted by hail
and then I feel myself panting while I desperately run in
search of a newsstand. I find one. The enormous blue
surface suddenly tilts downwards and descends over me
the way a fighter-bomber falls to one side and a second
later the cloud ascends, growing vertiginously until it
takes the form described in all the morning papers.
P, I then say, waking her, look at what I have done.
2
It snowed all night and classes are canceled. I found
out when I arrived, the doors of the school were
shut and I saw many of my classmates chasing each
other, tossing snow balls as if they were at a party. A
snowstorm in Santiago is extremely rare and as I left
my house the whiteness of the street struck me with
a lustrous clarity, almost blinding. As I run around
with my friends I see the mountains in the background
and then, as if it were floating over them, the image
of a city completely destroyed. The street is the same,
though it looks as if someone has disemboweled it.
No one has noticed, but the snowballs we toss have
turned into stones and after the first casualty I quickly
take off towards my house. Advancing I run into
groups each one bigger than the other, walking in the
direction opposite mine. At first, just a few people, but
soon after, thousands. They all move like sleepwalkers,
with terrible burns and melting lips, begging for
water between the mountains of ash and corpses. I
run furiously, dodging them and finally I arrive. An
eternity, a second, millions of years? Everything except
my house is an endless desert of leveled remains, as if it
had just been raked over, and what was once a street is
now barely a furrow in the middle of the infinite plains.
I open the door and enter. My mother is putting on
make up at her vanity, getting ready to go out and my
grandmother greets me with a smile. She asks me how
school was. I feel in my eyes the ancient flowing of
tears and I cry and I am cold as I embrace her.
3
The enormous concrete and glass dome rises above the
tower of the exhibition hall and the modernity of its
form contrasts with the swarm of little wooden shacks
surrounding the esplanade, stretching from the sea shore
to the edge of the city. Outlined in front of the building
is the Aioi Bridge, formed by two interconnected
perpendicular platforms, one of which ends in the
middle of the other making a T. The larger platform
crosses the river and the one in the middle connects
the bridge with the point of the peninsula formed a
bit above, before the point where the two channels of
the estuary join. There are only a few more concrete
constructions; the prefecture, the new school, the
automotive factory, they look like little white scabs on
a dark and coarse skin. I cross the bridge while holding
my mother’s hand and for a second her kimono shines
against the intense purple of the sky, but as we approach
the station the sky has cleared up. The train stops and
I feel the soft pressure of her hand on my back pushing
me towards my father who has just stepped off one of
the train cars. His silhouette closing in on me on the
platform fills me with reverence and fear. Yazuhiko
Girl, he says when he sees me, and I bow down lowering
my face. I look at the floor. The pavement of the
platform has disappeared and the beach appears in its
place. I turn around. The purple profile of the hills spills
over me in the budding light of the dawn and in a scene
that appears to emerge from thousands of years ago
I remember a port, Valparaíso, a life: a frustrated career
in engineering, four marriages, children now adults,
grandchildren, and the blurry fragments from a night
I’ve recovered in my memory (a student bender, a
hidden dive bar, and an incoherent fight at the exit, the
sound of some frenetic running, disappearing down
the hill and, suddenly, next to me, an eruption, the
screeching sound of the breakers bursting, definitively,
instantly, a sharp shrill). I shake off the sand and start
to walk away from that life. The beach sinks into the
pavement and the grainy floor of the train platform
reappears. His hand gently lifts my face and I look at him.
Little Yazuhiko Girl, my father repeats, Little Yazuhiko.
4
My mother dropped me off. She wore a blood blouse
and when we left the fog of the morning enveloped her
as if she were a fraying, red flower. Now the clouds have
cleared and in the distance we can see the mountains.
The school is a few blocks away and as we turned
towards Providencia the buildings were submerged for a
moment between the mist and then they disappeared.
The school is a simple two-story house attached to
another house like those old row houses built in Santiago
in the 1930s. I run up the stairs and into the classroom.
Before it must have been a dormitory, from its window
you can see the wall that blocks the street, then the
crowns of the trees and beyond them the same
mountains now slightly reddened. The teacher writes on
the chalkboard the date we are to repeat out loud; a
day, a month, a year: 1957. As I say, the buildings
suddenly appeared as if they were elongated white cubes,
not too tall and rigorously designed, extremely simple,
which gives them an aseptic, emotionless precision that
characterizes the streets of reconstructed cities. I walk on
one of those streets. It’s still early and for blocks and
blocks the buildings are reproduced with an insistent
monotony that is only interrupted by the road along the
river. Across from it is a wide esplanade of water formed
by the conjunction of two rivers and the bridge whose
platforms intersect in the middle create a strange
familiarity. I then cross the bridge and arrive at the point
of the peninsula outlined in the middle. From the edge of
the opposite bank, the dome of the demolished exhibition
hall extends, jutting out as if it were a giant split eye, but
now it’s not facing the little, wooden row houses rather it
faces the two futurist crystal pavilions, the steel and stone
of the Memorial for the Peace. It’s the year 2008. 51
years have passed and I’m in what is effectively a
reconstructed city.
What follows is the fast account of an awakening: I look
once more through the school window. The cordillera
has a reddish tint that reminds me of her blood blouse.
A bit closer are the crowns of the trees and outlined
above them the buildings extend like weightless white
cubes. From one of the windows I see what looks like a
narrow provincial street, and in the middle of it the small
school. I know, then, that in the next three seconds I will die.
5
I look away from the beach and the purplish profile of the
hills of Valparaíso leaps at me in the morning light that is
dawning. As if they had come from millions of years ago, I
remember the blurry remains of a life: four marriages,
children now adults, and then fragments from the night
before (a student bender, a fight, races in the dark and
then suddenly, next to me, the sound of the sea, definitive, a
sharp shrill). I must have gone into the sea fully dressed
because my clothes are soaking wet. I take off my shoes and
begin to walk away from that life. Moving forward my feet
sink into the sand that’s getting stiffer, harder, colder, and
as I look down I see the granular darkness of the pavement
and beside it the railroad tracks. I focus then on the tips of
my little girl shoes outlined against the grainy floor
of the platform and then on the soft pressure of my mother’s
hand pushing me. For awhile now, her kimono has
been glittering brightly against the dark depths of the river.
Crossing the bridge, I see in the water the reflection of the
evasive clouds of dawn, but by the time we get to the
station it is already morning. My father steps down from
one of the train cars and his approaching silhouette on the
platform fills me with reverence and fear. Yazuhiko Girl,
Yazuhiko Girl, he repeats when he sees me. I begin to lower
my head, bowing in front of him and when I finish the
roughness of the pavement spreads for a second beneath
my eyes only to burst, disintegrating in the radiance of
thousands of suns. Once again I look up. The sand keeps
opening up like little graves beneath my feet and I hear
the voice of a classmate shouting for me to wait for him.
I stop and wait. As we embrace the night starts to fall.
6
The dead mother can be seen on the first plane between
the ruins still steaming from what appears to be a market
and the boy stands crying next to her, his eyes fixed on
the camera lens. It’s an enormously blown-up image
from the film The Children of the War. There are two
other giant posters: one shows Einstein turning his head
and sticking his tongue out at the camera, the other a
sumo wrestler. He’s portrayed from the front, in a
waiting position, and his minuscule eyes are also staring
into the lens. The three images are equal in size hung
from left to right on the stone and glass facade of the
Memorial for the Peace, located at the tip of the
peninsula at the point where the two rivers meet. The
guide has explained that we are standing in front of one
of the seven branches of the estuary that traverses the
city and that tourists always stop at the edge of its
muddy shores to contemplate the rising of the tide.
There is a café a few blocks below along the same
branch. It’s a north american style café with a large
window. When one sits at the tables in the back, the
shoreline disappears and only the river itself can be seen,
only the water. The mouth of the river is outlined in the
midst of this obscurity. That is where the city ends and
the ocean begins. It’s a beautiful overlook, a tourist
requirement. I go in with the group and sit at one of the
tables in the back. Suddenly I have the feeling that
everyone has left. The greyish surface of the water fills
up the entire window and when I turn my face I see the
hand of a man gesturing for me to look at the camera. I
look up. Mother doesn’t move and I scream amid
the bodies that lie horribly burned. I look up again.
Some ashen figures look at me from the facade
of a building in a strange city. The river water appears to
have stopped, but it has not. Then the bottomless ocean.
7
Following all the other kids, I run through a tree-lined
street with narrow houses and the blow from
the car surprises me, as if this had happened to someone
else. From the ground I sense the voice of a woman
coming towards me, screaming as the white flowers ripple
in the blackness of the silk like a field of daisies in the
night. I feel her breast leaning over mine and in an abrupt
and unjust image I know that the scene that follows can
only belong to the realm of the unspeakable. I’m 30
years old and in fact the image is unjust. I’m wearing a
canvas bomber jacket, with two security straps crossing it,
and I look down at the sea. Two hours earlier the
burning stains of the clouds had been outlined against the
black of the night and when the sun finally finished
coming out, the immensity of the waters shone for a
moment as if they too were hanging. Now the clouds
have opened and the edge of the coast line can be seen
over the horizon. It’s an instant. The earth spills
vertiginously over me and in the moment I’m about to
turn to pull myself up I remember the name of an
unknown street, General del Canto, and of a city that
also means nothing to me, Santiago. I’m stretched out on
the ground, my eyes open, and while I listen to the
screams I reconstruct the blurry scenes of an awakening.
There’s a moving truck. There’s a woman with a black
dress with white flowers holding my hand while the
movers haul the last pieces of furniture. There are also
some children, they are on the sidewalk across the street
and they call me. I let go of the woman’s hand and I run
in front of the truck without looking to see if anything is
coming. I feel the hard blow launching me forward and
the pressure of the security straps over my shoulders
holding me in my seat. As I finish the turn I see behind
me the giant cloud of smoke and dust rising, casting a
shadow on the sky as if it were dusk. My mother presses
me against her naked breast stamped with the white
flowers of her kimono while enormous drops of water
fall and the hurricane-wind pulls the trees on the street
out from their roots. Like a glove, her skin begins to peel
off and with it the white flowers sink into the infinite
aridity of a desert never before seen, a desert completely
different from any other desert in the world, an infinite
desert of ruins and ash where all the destinies become one.
8
In an hour it will clear. They are announcing temperatures
below zero and through the bedroom window I observe
the darkness that completely covers the street. The rain
and hailstorm lasted for days, but now the silence has
returned and soon the white snow of the cordillera of the
Andes will completely fill the horizon. Now, the dawn has
begun to trace pieces of the block as if that
diminutive world that remained petrified beneath the
night intends to remember itself: the continuous facade
of the two-story houses with their little front yards, the
cars parked in front of the gates, the skeletons of the
trees. They are minuscule color-stains that spread little
by little over the blackness of the pavement like a snake
of light as the sky acquires that steely tone that precedes
the end of the night. P turns in the semi-darkness,
pulling off the blankets and returning to sleep. I
remember now that the heat doesn’t work and I’m
surprised by this summer warmth in the middle of
winter. I lean over and as I open the window the blue
surface of the earth spills vertiginously over me and
I am struck by a gust of scalding wind that nearly
knocks me out. Outside, a group of soldiers steps out
of their trenches, their charred faces looking up at the
sky, as if they keep looking at it while the fluid from their
melting eyes drips from their empty sockets and falls to
the ground where thousands of people roam around like
ghosts amid the unrecognizable remains of a street that
disappears in the desert. P has just woken up and opens her
eyes. There is a little boy. In the background, the son we will
never have shrieks, staring at us in the interminable dawn.
Note
Raúl Zurita’s “Little Boy” is in The Country of Planks, translated from the Spanish by Daniel Borzutzky, and published by Action Books in 2015. Read Borzutzky on Zurita’s “Little Boy.”