The Absolute by Daniel Guebel

Author:Daniel Guebel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: latin american literature;latin america;spanish translation;meta;sentimental novel;literary novel;historical novel;political novel;philosophical novel;novel;emerging authors;up and coming authors;young authors;debut novel;translation;literature in translation;Argentinian literature;Argentina;Fiction;World literature;literary fiction;realistic fiction books;fiction;novels;fiction books;literature;books fiction;mystery;romance;contemporary fiction;drama;family;england;french;war;thriller;classic
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2022-02-10T15:43:33+00:00

3

After the director of the penal institution left, Esau contemplated the reasons for his visit. The way he saw it, the director had come to fulfill the expectations of a ritual, one in which the authority appears before the detained in order to bring about an act of contrition. Since in his case he hadn’t shown any hint of accepting the rules of this game, it was to be expected that as a consequence he’d be submitted to reprisals. Esau prepared himself for the torture session by making an exhaustive inventory of the methods to inflict pain. Each individual torment formed a separate chapter: there was no way to compare the rack with the extraction of fingernails, impalement with the bruising of internal organs . . . he had to number each sector of the body and divide it into subsections, take into account the degrees of suffering, differentiate the instruments used in accordance with their specific aims (bleeding, tearing, searing, pressing, flaying, et cetera). Obviously, this anticipation wouldn’t help him to alleviate the pain, but he was consoled by the idea there was nothing new about it.

For the time being, however, nothing happened. The days went by with the morbid weariness of expectations unrealized. Was this blow suspended in the air a perfection of his martyrdom? After a while, Esau grew fed up. In some way he’d become indifferent to his future; to be imprisoned was just like being on the outside, save for the absence of the physical detail of weather. Years before, his father Andrei had described to him the impression of extreme solitude and independence that some Bedouins had made on him, lost as they were in the contemplation of bonfires smoldering in the desert night. “Maybe,” he’d told him, “they don’t need to talk, since they speak endlessly with demons.” Something similar happened to him as he now incessantly repeated in his mind the only event that had taken place since his arrival at the prison: the visit from the institution’s director. Maybe that—he told himself—had been the chance to implement his plan for rebellion. The director had spoken without drawing a breath, preventing him from answering. And why would he have acted like this, if not from a certain prior knowledge of his defeat? Victory, on the other hand, needs no verbal affirmation: its existence justifies itself.

Esau understood that the director of the institution would not repeat his visit.

One day, while leaving the bowl with his food, the guard let a whip fall on the floor of the cell. It was obvious it wasn’t a blunder: Esau was being invited to use the instrument against the guard himself, who had been made a token of sacrifice. Resolved not to obey, Esau began to lash his own body.

As soon as the first drops of blood welled up, the director of the penal institution entered and jerked the whip from his hands.

“What are you doing? Do you call this good behavior?” he asked. “Do you think

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