Read AHMM, December 2009 Online
Authors: Dell Magazine Authors
Then, after walking two blocks, he found himself in Garcia Street. Ready to collapse, his mouth dry, he looked from one side of the street to the other. A short distance away a fourteen-year-old boy was hurrying along. He followed him.
"Psst! Psst!"
The boy stopped.
"Hey, cutie. What are you doing out this late?"
"I'm going home. What do you want?"
"Nothing, nothing ... But don't go so soon, pretty one...” And he took the boy's arm.
The boy tried to pull away.
"Let go! I already told you I'm going home."
He wanted to run. But Ramirez gave a lunge and hugged him. Then the frightened street-boy started screaming:
"Papa! Papa!"
Almost immediately, a few feet away, a door opened, suddenly throwing some light into the street. A tall man appeared. It was the worker who had passed by before on Escobedo Street.
Seeing Ramirez he threw himself on him. Our poor man stood there staring back at him, with eyes as big and fixed as plates, trembling and silent.
"What do you want, you dirty bastard?"
And he gave him a furious kick in the stomach. Octavio Ramirez collapsed, with a long painful gasp of desire.
Epaminondas, which must be the worker's name, seeing the prick on the ground, considered that one kick was too little punishment, and gave him two more, splendid and marvelous ones, in that large nose that provoked him like a sausage.
How those marvelous kicks must have sounded!
Like the splattering of an orange, vigorously thrown against a wall; like the collapse of an umbrella whose ribs smack and shiver; like a nut cracked between two fingers; or better like the encounter of another firm sole of a shoe against another nose!
Like this:
Whack!
with a delicious space between.
Whack!
And then: How Epaminondas became greedy for flesh, driven by the instinct of perversity that makes murderers riddle their victims with stab wounds! That same instinct that pushes some innocent fingers, just for fun, to squeeze harder and harder around friends’ throats until they turn purple and their eyes blaze!
How the sole of Epaminondas's shoe slammed against Octavio Ramirez's nose!
Whack!
Whack!
dizzyingly,
Whack! until a thousand points of light like needles pierced the darkness.
Translator's note: Some of Palacio's textual ambiguity is inevitably lost in translation. For example, the police officer describes the victim as “un hombre vulgar,” which means both “ordinary” and “vulgar,” depending on the context; and the newspaper report mentions that the victim was “vicioso,” which covers a range of meanings from self-indulgent and spoiled to vicious and vice ridden. I opted for “ordinary” and “had some vices,” which are probably what the officer and the reporter had in mind, but in each case, much darker connotations are present in the original. (And yes,
“bien culotada pipa"
really means “big-assed pipe.")—K.W.
Copyright © 1927, and reprinted in
Obras Completas,
Editorial El Conejo, 1986. Used with permission of the estate. Translation © 2009 by Kenneth Wishnia.
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Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (ISSN:0002-5224), Vol. 54, No. 12, December 2009. Published monthly except for combined January/February and July/August double issues by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. Annual subscription $55.90 in the U.S.A. and possessions, $65.90 elsewhere, payable in advance in U.S. funds (GST included in Canada). Subscription orders and correspondence regarding subscriptions should be sent to 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. Or, to subscribe, call 1-800-220-7443. Editorial Offices: 267 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10007-2352. Executive Offices: 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. Periodical postage paid at Norwalk, CT, and additional mailing offices. Canadian postage paid at Montreal, Quebec, Canada Post International Publications Mail, Product Sales Agreement No. 40012460. © 2009 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications, all rights reserved. Dell is a trademark registered in the U.S. Patent Office. The stories in this magazine are all fictitious, and any resemblance between the characters in them and actual persons is completely coincidental. Reproduction or use, in any manner, of editorial or pictorial content without express written permission is prohibited. Submissions must be accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork. POSTMASTER: Send changes to
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