Over two dozen finely crafted absurdist short stories from Argentina’s Fernando Sorrentino. In its pages we encounter the city of Buenos Aries overrun with scorpions, a wart on a man's pinky finger grows into an elephant, cockroaches dream of becoming rhinos, alligators dance with tourists, parakeets threaten to take over the world and an old man exhibits the dark, creepy qualities of a vampire. To provide a more specific taste of this outstanding author's work, below is my write-up of two stories from the collection I found particularly fascinating:



ENGINEER SISMONDI'S NOTEBOOK
Engineer Sismondi travels to República Autónoma deep in the Brazilian jungle. From all those pictures he saw in magazines, the little city struck him as an anthology of extravagances and anachronisms. For one thing, the city was built in the shape of a hexagon, surrounded by high walls like a medieval town with its five streets following the same hexagonal pattern of the outer walls all the way to the park at the city's center. And the avenues, four in number, run from north, south, east and west, from outer walls to the center. No question, Sismondi muses, this peculiar specimen of modern geometrical architecture might just have been built to attract North American and Japanese tourists.

Upon entering the jungle city and making his obligatory visit to the admissions office, Sismondi quickly discovers as well-ordered and impeccable as the surrounding glass, steel and acrylics within the air-conditioned building, the trim, thirty-something women with their blue eyes, pulled back blonde hair and pale smooth skin, women who all seemed to resemble each other, speak to him in a mocking, condescending tone. Added to this, some of their questions and statements are downright insulting. Our twenty-seven-year-old engineer is beginning to feel more than a tad uncomfortable.

Once outside on the street, studying a map of the city, Sismondi detects the design is as artificial as it is simple, constructed as if in defiance of the naturalness of the surrounding jungle. The visiting engineer is made even more nervous and anxious when the bell boy at his hotel rejects his tip angrily, glaring at him with hateful eyes and then slams the door on his way out.

But the real drama begins when engineer Sismondi records in his notebook how one evening while dinning at a restaurant, his passion is aroused by the sight of a lovely young curvaceous woman, probably Argentinian of Arab ancestry, with large black eyes and dark curly hair. But she is with another man. Darn! Several days later, while drinking coffee at an outdoor café, this same beauty drops a note on the sidewalk next to him. Returning to his hotel room, he reads her name is Isabel Simes and she is being accused of a crime she didn’t commit that carries the death penalty. Isabel asks him to contact her father at a specific address in Rio de Janeiro.

Sismondi acts but he is then immediately summoned to the city’s police headquarters. What follows will remind a reader of Franz Kafka, such tales as Before the Law, The Trial and The Castle. However, this is not Kafka, this is Fernando Sorrentino - thus we have a Kafkaesque nightmare with an absurdist curveball thrown in at the very end. Thank you, Fernando. An unforgettable literary lollapalooza.



A LIFE PERHAPS WORTH RESTORING
Mister Sanitation: Our unnamed narrator tells us right off he is obsessive about cleanliness – he doesn’t touch dogs or cats and does everything in his power to rid his home of spiders and insects. He also takes the necessary, vital steps to avoid being in close range of a mosquito or fly. Rotten potato in his very apartment - alarming; a mouse, or, even a worse, horror of horrors, a rat – unthinkable. At a comfortable distance we as readers and observers might laugh at someone with such an obsession but actually living with this affliction is no laughing matter. The medical profession considers obsessive-compulsive a disorder, and for good reason.

Malignant Rodent: Very grievous news – Mr. Sanitation detects there is a malevolent presence in the form of a mouse in his apartment. But, where? The mouse hunt is on - as if that nasty rodent were the bearer of plague-carrying fleas, every square inch of kitchen, bathroom, dining room and bedroom undergo diligent, rigorous, microscopic inspection. The results? Even with high power objective lens turned to its highest power of magnification, no mouse.

Sterilized and Sanitized: To make sure we know just how completely and thoroughly he is committed to minimizing possible contamination and maximizing the antiseptic, our narrator enumerates his habits of eating and living, as when he uses boiling water and detergent to scrub clean his plate, glass, fork and knife. Of course, feeling the need to convey such details as part of his story underscores how easily obsession can overwhelm.

Rats!: Our narrator is no longer bound to office work or teaching school, jobs he found uncomfortable for reasons pertaining to culture, economics and ethics “in that strict order” (you have to love how, true to form as an obsessive-compulsive, he makes sure we know the strict order). So, what does our Mr. Sanitation do for a living? Since he enjoys reading, has a keen ability in foreign languages and cherishes his independence, he now has his dream job: sitting alone in his antiseptic apartment, performing the work of a translator, mostly for large American publishers. And, a live-in partner or wife? No way, José - no need and the disruption to his fanatically neat and polished living space would be highly distasteful. But to suffer the intrusion of a rat! Yes, at this point that rodent is not a mouse but a rat.

Seeking Help: He pays a visit to his local veterinary clinic to inquire on the most effective method for ridding his apartment of rats. The interchange with the woman behind the desk is laugh-out-loud hilarious. When he is about ready to walk out the door, rat pills in hand, we read: “Although I would have preferred a less grotesque and scientific, less Anglo-Saxon plan, something a bit more trustful like facing the rat and trying to kill it by hitting it on the head with a shovel, for instance, I accepted her satanic prescription because truly, I no longer had the strength or the will to start a face to face confrontation.”

The Crackup: Events turn weird for Mr. Sanitation beginning that very night when he is woken from a sound sleep and thinks he hears the rat tap-tap-tapping. Ah, echoes of Edgar Allen Poe, perhaps? His calm, methodical strategy is forever abandoned; our narrator declares henceforth he will take on the role of an irrational fighter. I wouldn’t want to spoil the story for a reader so I’ll end by mentioning he makes a startling discovery the next morning which prompts him to revisit that veterinary clinic where he walks out with much more than simply rat poison.