Seven Stories
Translated from the Spanish by Kit Maude
Little Surprises
It’s a regular occurrence, or so say the newspapers, for a burglar to fall asleep in the house he’s robbing, usually because of drink, only to be caught by the police. This time (it didn’t make the papers because nobody reported it) when she found him she decided to adopt him. Maybe she was flattered that he’d felt so at home. Eventually, she even came to love him. The good thing about living with a burglar, she reflected, is he has little surprises for you every day. And if he doesn’t return, you know where to find him.
Pride
M.’s problem, the psychiatrist announced during their first session, was that he was too much in love with himself. M. didn’t see what was so wrong with that: he knew he was forbidden from falling in love with his mother and sister but nobody had ever told him not to love himself. Still, he asked for a solution, to which the psychiatrist answered that it was the same for every damaging affair: dump and forget about the object of your love. After that first (and last) session, M. felt split in two. Sometimes he stammered when pronouncing his name.
She had almost nodded off in her chair when she heard the noise. She stood up suddenly, knocking over her chair, and stumbled to the back door. As she walked, the asphalt turned to earth and the houses grew sparser. Dawn found her in the countryside. The next day she continued on down the road, her coat collar raised against the wind, head hunched between her shoulders. By nightfall she had arrived at an inn and hungrily sat down to her dinner. She was on the cusp of sleep (smoking a cigarette) when she heard the noise again.
The world went fully digital some time ago. M. is one of the few who (in his infinite melancholy) has insisted on keeping his dusty old books, the kind printed in ink on paper. The problem is he has nowhere to put them; bookshelves have grown scarce and expensive. So as to afford these hard to find antiques, M. is forced to sell his books. Only when he has sold his last one can he purchase the shelves. Now his problem is he has nothing with which to fill them: books have grown terribly expensive.
M. feels that the light coming in through the window isn’t enough to read by and leans over the side of his armchair to turn on the foot lamp. In fact, unbeknownst to him, the lamp was already on so when he flicks the switch he’s actually turning it off. (It’s not his fault, the switch is the ambiguous kind that makes it hard to tell.) M. settles back into his chair and returns to his reading. Now, the light seems wholly sufficient because he knows that it’s as good as it’s ever going to get.
M. sees a fly crash repeatedly into a window and says: ‘What a stubborn girl, she reminds me of my sister trying to convince mom to do more exercise and mom saying she won’t.’ His wife (who loves animals) offers a different interpretation: ‘Maybe she doesn’t want to go out, maybe she enjoys banging her head against the glass.’ M. nods: ‘Just like my sister.’ ‘We humans anthropomorphize everything,’ she ponders. ‘I’m sure animals do the same with us,’ he replies. She frowns, considering this to be the height of anthropomorphism. Then she opens the window.
The first thing she hears in the morning (the sound that always wakes her up) is the typewriter in her husband’s study. But when she opens her eyes she sees him sleeping next to her. The paradox continues throughout the day: she can see M. eating his breakfast, reading the newspaper in the living room, or, later, accompanying her to the movies, but at the same time hears him typing away in his study. She knows that this is the karma of living with a writer and refuses to trust her eyes over her ears.
Ariel Magnus
Ariel Magnus (b. 1975, Buenos Aires) is a writer and literary translator. He has published numerous novels and story collections and edited anthologies of Argentine humor and misanthropy. Several of his books have been translated into French, German and English.
Kit Maude
Kit Maude is a translator based in Buenos Aires. He has translated dozens of classic and contemporary Latin American writers such as Armonía Somers, Jorge Luis Borges, Camila Sosa Villada, and Aurora Venturini for a wide array of publications, and writes reviews and criticism for different outlets in Spanish and English including the Times Literary Supplement, Revista Ñ, and Otra Parte.
Marc Truckenbrodt
Marc Truckenbrodt (b. 1998, Jena, Germany) lives and works in Hamburg and Hangzhou (China). He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 2023 and studies now at the HFBK Hamburg for a Master. In 2023, Truckenbrodt was awarded the Kunsthalle Wien Prize. In 2025, he took part in a residency at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai. His works have recently been shown at Galerie Kollaborativ (Berlin, Germany), LODGER (Berlin, Germany), Fanflus (Shanghai, China), Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna, Austria), and Ray Gallery (Hangzhou, China), among others.This autumn, he presents a solo exhibition at Deltainst (Hangzhou, China).Truckenbrodt’s works are part of the collections of the Wien Museum, the Vienna Insurance Group, and the Swatch Group.
In his works, Truckenbrodt combines formal, epic storytelling with a poetic objective to create intense, contradictory, and multilayered relationships. Interwoven with emotions, experiences, and events, his fascination with literature forms the breeding ground for his practice. His works often arise from real events and thoughts arround them. Truckenbrodt sees this process as the means and end of his work. At the core of his practice lies a search for identity of the individual, expressed through painting, drawing, printmaking, and comics.