Bird (A Guatemalan Story)

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The Flamingos’ Stockings (Translation of Quiroga story Las Medias de los Flamencos)

One time the vipers held a great dance. They invited the frogs and the toads, the flamingos, the alligators and the fish. The fish could not walk let alone dance, but as the dance was held at the shore of the river the fish appeared on the sand and applauded with their tails.

The alligators, so as to dress well, had hung a necklace of bananas around their throats, and smoked Paraguayan cigarettes. The toads had stuck fish scales to all parts of their bodies and swayed as they walked as if they were swimming. And every time that they passed, so seriously, by the shore of the river, the fish cried out and made fun of them.

The frogs had perfumed their whole bodies and walked on two feet. Besides, each one carried, hanging like a small lantern, a glow-worm that kept them balanced.

But the most beautiful were the vipers. All of them, without exception, were dressed in dancers’ outfits, of the same colour as each viper. The red vipers wore a little skirt of red tulle; the green, a green one; the yellow, another of yellow tulle; and the yararás, a little grey skirt with stripes the colour of brick powder and ash, this being the yarará’s colour.

And the most splendid of all were the coral vipers, which were dressed with abundant red, black and white chiffon that fluttered like streamers. When the vipers danced and turned, balanced on the tips of their tails, the invited applauded wildly.

Only the flamingos, who then had white legs and, as much now as then, very thick and crooked noses, only the flamingos were sad because not being very intelligent they had not known how to adorn themselves. They were jealous of the others’ outfits, above all that worn by the coral vipers. Every time that a viper passed in front of them, flirting and making the chiffon streamers flutter, the flamingos died of jealousy.

A flamingo then said:

“I know what we can do. We’re going to put on red, black and white stockings, and the coral vipers are going to fall in love with us.”

They took to the air, crossed the river and knocked at a village store.

“Knock-knock!” they tapped with their feet.

“Who is it?” replied the proprietor.

“We’re the flamingos. Do you have red, black and white stockings?”

“No, there aren’t any,” answered the proprietor. “Are you crazy? You’re not going to find stockings like that anywhere.”

The flamingos then went to another store.

“Knock-knock! Do you have red, black and white stockings?”

“What are you saying? Red, black and white? There are no stockings like that anywhere. You’re crazy. Who are you?”

“We’re the flamingos,” they replied. And the man said:

“Then without doubt you’re crazy flamingos.” They went to another store.

“Knock-knock! Do you have red, black and white stockings?”

The proprietor cried out:

“What colour? Red, black and white? Only big-nosed birds like you would ask for stockings like that. Get out of here at once!”

And the man threw his broom at them.

The flamingos called at all the stores similarly and everywhere they were taken as crazy.

Then an armadillo that had gone to gather water at the river decided to make fun of the flamingos and said to them, giving them a big greeting:

“Good evening, flamingos! I know what you’re looking for. But you’re not going to find stockings like that in any store. There might be some in Buenos Aires, but you would have to request they be sent by parcel post. My sister-in-law, the owl, has stockings like that. Ask for them and she’s going to give you the red, black and white stockings.”

The flamingos thanked him and went flying toward the owl’s cave. And they said to him:

“Good evening, Owl! We’ve come to ask you for the red, black and white stockings. Today the vipers are holding a great dance, and if we put on these stockings the coral vipers are going to fall in love with us.”

“With pleasure!” replied the owl. “Wait a second and I’ll return with them.”

Taking to the air, he left the flamingos alone and moments later returned with the stockings. But they were not stockings, rather the skins of coral vipers, lovely skins that the owl had recently removed from the vipers he had hunted.

“Here are the stockings,” the owl said to them. “Don’t worry about a thing except this: dance the whole night, dance without stopping, dance on your sides, on your beaks, on your heads, however you want, but don’t stop because then you’ll cry.”

But because they are so stupid, the flamingos did not understand well the danger they were running in this and mad with happiness put on the coral viper skins, as if they were stockings, inserting their legs in the skins, which were like tubes. Very pleased they went flying to the dance.

When they saw the flamingos with their beautiful stockings, everyone was jealous. The vipers wanted to dance only with them and because the flamingos did not stop moving their legs even for an instant, the vipers could not see well what the precious stockings were made of.

However, little by little, the vipers became mistrustful. When the flamingos danced to the side of them, they bent toward the floor to see well.

The coral vipers were the most anxious of all of them. They did not remove their gazes from the stockings and also bent down and tried to touch the flamingos’ legs with their tongues, viper tongues being like people’s hands. But the flamingos danced and danced without stopping although they were tired and already on the verge of quitting.

The coral vipers that were aware of this at once asked the frogs for their glow-worms, which were little bug lights and everyone waited together for the flamingos to fall over with tiredness.

Precisely a minute later, a flamingo that could not continue collided with an alligator’s cigarette, staggered and fell on it side. The coral vipers at once ran with their glow-worms and shone them full upon the flamingo’s legs. And they saw what those stockings were and emitted a whistle that could be heard on the other side of the Paraná River.

“They’re not stockings,” cried the vipers. “We know what they are! They’ve tricked us! The flamingos have killed our brothers and have put on the skins like stockings! Those stockings are coral viper skins!”

Hearing this, the flamingos, frightened because they had been found out, wanted to fly away. But they were so tired that they could not even lift a foot. Then the coral vipers threw themselves upon them and twisting upon their feet bit apart the stockings. Furious, they tore them into pieces and also bit the flamingos’ legs so that they would die.

The flamingos, driven crazy with pain, leapt from side to side, but the coral vipers continued twisting upon their feet. Until finally, seeing that there remained not even one piece of stocking, the coral vipers left them alone. Tired out, they tidied up their chiffon outfits.

Besides, the coral vipers were sure that the flamingos were going to die because at least half of those that had bitten them were poisonous.

But the flamingos did not die. Feeling great pain, they ran and threw themselves in the water. They cried out with pain and their legs, which had been white, were now red with the vipers’ poison. Days passed and the terrible pain in their legs never ceased. They were the colour of blood because they were poisoned.

This happened a long time ago. Now, the flamingos still spend almost the entire day with their red legs in the water, trying to relieve the pain in them.

From time to time they leave the shore and take some steps on the ground to see how they feel. But the pain of the poison returns at once and they run and put their legs back in the water. At times the pain they feel is so great that they contract a leg and remain thus for hours, being unable to stretch it.

This is the story of the flamingos, whose once white legs are now red. All the fish know the reason for this and make fun of them. But the flamingos, while they take their cure in the water, lose no opportunity to get their own back, making a meal of any tiny fish that draws too near to joke at their expense.

The Giant Tortoise (Translation of Quiroga story La Tortuga Gigante)

Once upon a time there was a man who lived in Buenos Aires who was very happy because he was healthy and hard working. But one day he fell ill and the doctors said to him that he would only get better if he moved to the countryside. He did not want to go because he had younger brothers for whose welfare he was responsible. Little by little his condition worsened until a friend of his, the director of the zoo, said to him one day:

“You’re my friend, a good, hard-working man. That’s why I want you to go and live in the mountains, where you’ll be able to take a lot of exercise in the open air and get better. And because you’re a very good shot, hunt wild mountain animals and bring me the skins. I’ll give you money in advance so that your younger brothers are able to eat well … ”

The sick man agreed and went to live in the mountains, far away, farther away even than Misiones. There it was very hot and this made him well.

He lived alone in the forest and cooked for himself. He ate birds and wild animals, which he hunted with his rifle, and afterwards ate fruit. He slept beneath the trees and when the weather turned bad it took him just five minutes to build an arbour out of palm leaves, and there he would sit smoking, very happy in the middle of the forest that bellowed around him in the wind and the rain.

He had made a tie out of the animal skins and carried it over his shoulder. He had also caught many venomous vipers alive, keeping them in a large gourd; in the region there are gourds as large as a kerosene tin.

He regained his colour, his strength, and his appetite. One day when he was very hungry, because two days had passed without his hunting anything, he saw by the shore of a large lake an enormous tiger intent on devouring a tortoise. He had turned the creature on its back, held it in place with a foot, and was preparing to remove the flesh with his claws. Seeing the man, the tiger emitted a terrifying roar and leapt upon him. But the hunter, who was a great marksman, aimed at him between the eyes and smashed his head. Afterwards, he removed the skin, which was so immense that it could only be used as carpet.

Now, the man said to himself, I’m going to eat tortoise, which is delicious meat.

But drawing near the tortoise, he saw that it was wounded, its head nearly separated from its neck and hanging by no more than two or three threads of flesh.

Despite his hunger, the man felt sorry for the poor tortoise and dragged her to his arbour with a rope, bandaging her head with strips of material that he removed from his shirt, because he only had the one shirt and had no rags. He had dragged the tortoise along the ground because it was so large, as high as a chair, and of the same weight as a man.

The tortoise remained in one corner and there she passed a number of days without moving.

The man dressed her wounds the whole time and afterwards he lightly struck her on the back with his hand.

Finally, the tortoise was cured. But then the man fell sick. He contracted a fever and ached all over.

Later, he could no longer leave his bed. His fever worsened and his throat burnt from so much thirst. The man understood that he was gravely ill and spoke out loud, though he was alone, because his fever had him in a delirium.

“I’m going to die,” said the man. “I’m alone, already I can no longer get out of bed, and I don’t have anyone to bring me water either. I’m going to die of hunger and thirst.”

But the tortoise had heard and understood what the hunter had said. And then she thought:

That other time the man did not eat me though he was very hungry. He cured me and now I’m going to cure him.

She then went to the lake, looked for a small tortoise shell and after cleaning it well with sand and ash gave some water to the man, who was lying on top of his blanket, dying of thirst. She went at once to look for nutritious roots and tender small herbs, which she gave the man to eat. The man ate without realising who was feeding him because he was delirious with fever and would not have recognised anyone.

Every morning the tortoise went searching in the mountain for better quality roots to give the man, regretful that she could not climb the trees to gather fruit for him.

For several days the hunter ate without realising who was giving him the food until one day he recovered full consciousness. He looked all around him and saw that he was alone, there being no one around but the tortoise, which was an animal. Again, he spoke out loud:

“I’m alone in the forest, the fever’s going to return, and I’m going to die here, because only in Buenos Aires would I be able to get better. But I’ll never go and I’ll die here.”

As he had said, the fever returned that afternoon, stronger than before, and again he lost consciousness.

But this time too the tortoise had heard him and said to herself:

If he remains here in the mountain he’s going to die, because there’s no cure, and I have to bring him to Buenos Aires.

This said, she cut some fine, strong lengths of creeper, which are like lanyards, laying the man very carefully upon his back, fastening him well with the creepers so that he would not fall off. She made many tests to ensure that the rifle, the skins and the gourd with the vipers sat well, and in the end she achieved what she wanted and, without disturbing the hunter, set off on the journey.

The tortoise, weighed down accordingly, walked and walked day and night. She crossed mountains, fields, swam across rivers a league wide, crossed marshes in which she was almost completely buried, always with the moribund man upon her back. After eight or ten hours of walking she stopped, undid the knots and carefully laid the man down to rest in a place where there was dry grass.

She then went to find water and tender roots and fed them to the sick man. She ate also although she was so tired she preferred to sleep.

At times she walked in the sun and as it was summer, the hunter was so feverish that he fell into a delirium and almost died of thirst. He cried out water! water! repeatedly. Every time that he did the tortoise had to bring him something to drink.

Thus she walked day after day, week after week. Gradually they drew nearer Buenos Aires although the tortoise felt that she was weakening, that she had less strength every day, though she never complained. From time to time she lay flat, devoid of strength, and the man recovered partial consciousness. And he said, out loud:

“I’m going to die. I’m getting sicker by the minute and only in Buenos Aires will I be able to be cured. But I’m going to die here, alone in the mountain.”

Unaware of anything, he believed that he was still in the arbour. The tortoise then rose and recommenced the walk.

But one day, around evening, the poor tortoise could advance no further. She had reached the limit of her strength and could not go on. In order to arrive quicker, she had not eaten for a week. She no longer had the strength to carry such weight.

When night fell, she saw a distant light on the horizon, a brilliance that lit the sky, and she had no idea what it was. Little by little she felt weaker until she closed her eyes, prepared to die with the hunter, thinking sadly that she had not been able to save the man who had been good to her.

However, they had already arrived in Buenos Aires, and she did not realise it. The light she saw on the horizon was the brilliance of the city and she was preparing to die at the end of her heroic voyage.

But a city mouse – possibly the little mouse Pérez – encountered the two dying travellers.

“What a tortoise!” said the mouse. “I’ve never seen a tortoise so big. And that which you’re carrying on your back, what is it? Wood?”

“No,” replied the tortoise, sadly. “It’s a man.”

“And where are you going with that man?” asked the curious mouse.

“I’m going … I’m going … I wanted to go to Buenos Aires,” replied the poor tortoise in a voice so low that it could barely be heard. “But we’re going to die here because we’ll never arrive … ”

“Ah, silly, silly!” said the little mouse, laughing. “I never saw a tortoise so silly! Yes, you’ve already arrived in Buenos Aires. The light you see over there, that’s Buenos Aires.”

Hearing this, the tortoise felt enormous strength because she still had time to save the hunter. She recommenced the walk.

And it was still morning when the director of the zoo saw a mud-spattered, wasted tortoise carrying flat on her back, attached to it with creepers, so that he would not fall off, a dying man. The director recognised his friend and hurried off to look for a cure, with which the hunter got better at once.

When the hunter found out how the tortoise had saved his life, that she had made a journey of 300 leagues to find help, he did not want to be parted from her. And because he could not keep her in his house, which was very small, the director of the zoo agreed to house her in the zoo and look after her as if she was his own daughter.

And so it came to pass. The tortoise, happy and content with the affection they showed her, roamed through the entire garden, and she is the same tortoise we see every day eating the small grass around the monkey cages.

The hunter goes to see her every afternoon and she knows from afar that it’s her friend by the sound of his steps. They spend a couple of hours together and she never wants him to leave without giving her an affectionate little pat on the back.

On the Public Expression of Private Woe

A vaguely Bergmanesque modality opens Martin McDonagh’s Academy Award winning short film Six Shooter (2004). An extreme close-up frames the face of Donnelly (Brendan Gleeson), laying bare the gamut of his shock and grief when a hospital doctor informs him of the unexpected death of his beloved spouse in the wee hours that morning.

But this is no weighty Bergman-like tome on death and its repercussions in the lives of loved ones left behind, in spite of the fact that death has captured many on its rounds through the night. The doctor is unable to spare more than a few minutes to console the grief stricken husband, there having been three other deaths for the staff to contend with that night. No less than two cot deaths and the fatal shooting of a mother by her son.

Before boarding a Dublin bound train home, Donnelly takes leave of his wife with a loving kiss on her inert lips and the presentation of a keepsake, a picture of a cherished pet of hers – a rabbit. On the train he snares a place opposite a young lad as extrovert and in the mood for the gab as the newly widowed is not. It soon becomes apparent that nothing in life is sacred for the Kid (Ruaidhrí Conroy). And death, most certainly, is not either.

The pair are joined in the carriage by a maudlin youngish couple, the parents of one of the cot death babies aforementioned. The teasing the Kid directs at them – he conjectures, among other things, that more than likely they were the ones responsible for their baby’s death – almost drives the father to violent retribution. Upset beyond words, the mother ultimately takes the most drastic of steps in response.

But not even this, carried out right in front of him, is sufficient to imbue respect for what others may be personally suffering in loss in the Kid. Yet, to his credit, he manages to partly win over a by this time less woebegone Donnelly with a hilarious story, deriving from his childhood, about a cow with trapped wind. The best day of my f….n’ life, he proudly proclaims.

It eventually dawns on Donnelly that the the Kid and the matricide he was told about at the hospital are one and the same. And further calamity is in store on what has already been a calamitous day in the lives of these strangers on a train. The ironic, bittersweet ending caps off an entertaining meditation on the problematical nature of private pain.

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Death and grief, as well as the director’s liking for catching the audience off guard with totally unexpected ‘wham bam, thank you, m’am’ moments, also underpin his feature Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017). Frustrated by the inability of the local police to find the person who raped and murdered her daughter Angela, Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) opts for a unique bit of naming and shaming when she pays to rent out three long fallen into disrepair billboards on one of the entranceways into town.

This bull by the horns action sets her on a collision course with the police, though not so much the officer, Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), actually named as his klutzy underling Dixon (Sam Rockwell), a lawman of unconventional methods who stands accused in the eyes of not a few of torturing blacks in custody. Many in the small Mid-west community share the establishment outrage at Mildred’s tactic and side with the popular chief. They view the woman’s stratagem as especially cheap and tactless given Willoughby is in the latter stages of a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Mildred is hardly a saint. However, the morality or otherwise of her moves aside, she is at her combative best when dealing with some of the acrimony she lets loose. Officer Dixon resorts to various means to try and coerce her to take down the billboards impugning the superior he looks up to, but she counter punches as well as the best of them. As she explains, she has nothing personal against the chief. She put his name up there in huge font, she says, only because the buck has to stop somewhere. He assures her in his turn that he deeply regrets not having been able to make headway in the yearlong investigation.

The film, arguably, is at its flimsiest when Mildred’s dysfunctional family comes under scrutiny. Her ex-husband, a jumped up former cop, has sought solace in the arms of a girl about the same age as his and Mildred’s lone surviving child Robbie (Lucas Hedges). As portrayed in a crucial flashback, Angela is precocious and nasty. Plenty of teens would be flat out denied use of Mom’s car, but few would react to the negative in the way she does. Is Mildred, a year down the road, riddled with guilt that she and her daughter parted on such a spiteful note and endeavouring in her twisted way to come to terms with her loss and heartache? Seeking justice? Vengeance? On the other hand, back in the present, Lucas Hedges as Robbie makes a good fist of the still coming to terms son and brother frustrated and angry that his mother has dredged up the whole awful business again.

If Chief Willoughby’s days are numbered, the way in which they do finally end represent another example of Mr. McDonagh’s characteristic ‘rug out from underneath’ tendency. The chief has his own surprises to pull too, though their ramifications are felt postmortem. And if the auteur is best at revealing other – frequently more human – sides of characters we may be just about ready to give up on, he succeeds as admirably with Officer Dixon as any of the other players.

There is something quite touching in Sam Rockwell’s ‘momma’s boy’ cop (Sandy Martin plays Momma in an excellent turn), especially when he oversteps the mark and finds himself all at sea. We are ultimately led to believe the faith his chief had in him, contrary to the multitude of dissenting voices, might not be misplaced after all. What he has learnt about himself could go on to stand him in good stead. Both he and Mildred, unlikely allies once the dust settles, have dabbled in fire, but appear set for a tandem assumption of greater responsibility for their actions in future.

Ben Davis’s cinematography sits well with Carter Burwell’s original score. Also evocatively featured, to name a few, are a haunting rendition of Last Rose of Summer (Thomas Moore) by Renee Fleming, Townes Van Zandt’s Buckskin Stallion Blues, and The Four Tops cover of Left Bank’s golden oldie Walk Away Renee.

Method … to the Madness!

Rooted in the Konstantin Stanislavski system, method acting may be defined as a dramatic technique in which actors identify as closely as possible to the characters they are depicting by correlating experiences from their personal lives to those characters. At least this was the spin Lee Strasberg placed on Stanislavski’s ideas. Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner were the other two American teachers most often associated with the Russian actor and director, but emphasised aspects to the approach different to the psychological ones crucial to Strasberg. Adler’s stress lay on the sociological side, while for Meisner the behavioural facets were uppermost.

Given this disparity, the method technique may be more accurately termed an elaboration of Stanislavski’s original system. Lee Strasberg taught many prominent American actors in the latter half of the 20^th century, among them Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Jane Fonda, and Jack Nicholson. Two other prominent actors from the same era, Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro, were students of Stella Adler, whose break with Lee Strasberg occurred after she concluded that his adaptation of Stanislavski was ‘too limited’ and therefore inauthentic. By contrast she taught her students to go beyond personal experiences, to imagine the scene’s ‘given circumstances’.

Meisner thought similarly to Adler, describing acting as ‘living faithfully under imaginary circumstances’. Robert Lewis, another influential teacher who broke with Strasberg, felt that method acting neglected vocal and physical training, deficiencies certainly not apparent in some of Brando’s and De Niro’s tour de force portrayals.

To digress a moment, the case of Jack Nicholson is interesting, this being an artist who has built a career lasting several decades upon hard to ignore performances reliant on his own particular brand of the ‘method’. There have been notable exceptions, such as his David Staebler in The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), but he can appear to correlate from his own life to such an extent that one is left with the feeling that it is not an actor playing a character so much as a character playing the movie star Nicholson. Perhaps this type of method actor acts from a conviction that no fictional figure they might be called on to represent could be as inherently interesting as themselves, the movie star.

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Such an overriding need for authenticity, for realism, in a medium founded upon deception, the trickery conjured by an interplay of shadows and light. This need has become greater since the coming to the fore of so-called reality television. If fictional output in the audio / visual realm has always had to wage a battle for relevance with the ‘real’, it is a battle increasingly pitched in this day and age, when ‘realism’ is preponderant.

In the form of nightly news bulletins, current affairs analyses, documentaries, et cetera, a type of reality television has been in existence forever, but never before in such quantity. Many practitioners of fiction, perhaps fearful of floundering in the wash-up, have responded by lacing their ostensibly fictional work with actual incident, thus muddying the line between what is real in their product and what is staged.

This has been going on for decades. Clearly, Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider’s sexual congress in Last Tango in Paris (1972) is simulated. But what caught a great number of people by surprise many years later was the revelation that Brando and the film’s director Bernardo Bertolucci ‘ganged up’ on the French actress in the moments before the cameras rolled for some of the more notorious scenes, all in the name of enhanced authenticity.

More than four decades after the film was made, rumours continue to abound regarding the possibility that Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie had bona fide sex in a pivotal scene from Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973). As if such is, or was, a major factor in determining the artistic merit or otherwise of the film. But even if the two leads and the filmmakers dared be so bold in the early seventies it was hardly a step minus precedent.

Years before that, Swedish director Vilgot Sjoman’s films I am Curious – Yellow (1967) and I am Curious – Blue (1968) garnered attention for their unsimulated sex. The Swedes may have indirectly helped usher in a succession of ‘art’ films that traded on the supposed infamy of authentic sex, among them In the Realm of the Senses (1976), Fruits of Passion (1981), and Devil in the Flesh (1986).

By the time Baise-moi (2000) and 9 Songs (2004) were made and released it had all become passé. Why a director of the calibre of Michael Winterbottom, who has made some fine quasi-documentary films, bothered with a fictional veneer in 9 Songs is puzzling. He might have done just as well to call his film a quasi-documentary about two actors who spend most of the film having sex. The quality of the films mentioned above varies widely, but the poorest of them are tedious in the extreme, their unvarnished sex notwithstanding.

Ruggero Deodato’s sleight of hand in Cannibal Holocaust (1980) fooled many, hilariously culminating in his indictment for the murder of his cast. His exoneration would come when his alleged victims made a public appearance, thus proving they had not lost their lives to the cause of film art after all. One can smile at the blackly comic mockumentary Man Bites Dog (1992), which deals with a filmmaking crew who at first passively record the exploits of the serial killer they intend to make a documentary about only to gradually become active participants in the killer’s sprees. As Kenneth Tynan points out, it is ‘a troubling, often funny vision of what the movies have done to our souls … ’

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Oh for the days when the movies only had to compete with occasionally graphic (if still heavily censored) news and documentaries! Now it is up against an upstart that goes by the name the World Wide Web, the appearance of which categorically changed the parameters for all time. Those with a yen for it can now with a few clicks access as much real sex and real violence as they can stomach. 24 / 7.

Be that as it may, on present evidence it may be a while yet before those whose province is, in essence, fiction get the picture. Seeking solace for their dilemma in a periodic resort to some grandiose über reality (usually real sex or, less often, real blood), they fail to understand that it is precisely this realm audiences do not wish to inhabit when they turn to works of fiction.

Picture, if you will, a person who makes a living counselling rootless, emotionally fragile, harried people bereft of any genuine vision of what their lives could be. Is such an individual, on heading home after their daily eight hours labour, likely to have the slightest wish to unwind in front of, for example, a John Cassavetes film? I think not. Method actors tend to take like ducks to water to the mundane and easily relatable ground that Cassavetes once upon a time explored and that hundreds of other directors, in true believer style, now plough. But when unrestrained these same actors can emote to a degree so off the meter that it is painful to sit through. Witness Peter Falk’s insufferable displays as Nick Longhetti in A Woman Under the Influence (1974).

Robert Bresson and Rainer Werner Fassbinder were two directors not the least bit interested in mirroring real life. They insisted their actors underplay. Uncannily – is it despite, or because of, this imperative? – their work reveals more about reality, or how things really are, than countless purportedly realist films. If the only thing movie watchers wished for from the product they paid to see was a replica of the sorts of experiences they might encounter every day of their lives they would be done with it and benignly immerse themselves in non-fiction and nothing but non-fiction. This they do not want. Fiction would do well then to maintain its place, stay as separate as it is able from the ho-hum real. The more closely it comes to reality the less it will serve to enlighten, the very purpose for which much of it is made.

To return to the method – an acting method, by the way, that is no longer held sacrosanct. The greatest actors may be those who, appreciating Stella Adler’s broader view of Stanislavsky, look much further than their own selves in creating character. Their adherence to multiple acting techniques equips them to ‘get’ just about any character, to bring off roles with an aplomb divorced of over the top theatrics. In a nutshell, they are character actors. There is never any doubt they are playing a role, but they are often brilliant at what they do. In the words of Charles Laughton: “Method gives you a photograph. Real actors give you an oil painting.”

The coati

Translation of Quirgoa story El Coatí:

The coati is a little animal as long of head as it is of tail, with both arched upwards, possessed of the cry of a bird, high-pitched and rash, and with a curiosity that devours it alive.

There is nothing, in effect, that the snout and paws of the coati spares. To see what lies inside, it is capable of busying itself in opening an oven heated to 1000 degrees. If there are ten books within its reach and only one of them is neatly wrapped for posting, only this one will interest it, and it will investigate its cover and the cover beneath that, leaving it bare and with all the leaves scratched, because perhaps there might have been something between them.

The one we owned, besides its diabolical curiosity, wielded a strange effect on men – though not on women – because a mountain man had bred it.

The coati had never known its mother. It owed everything – warmth, cuddles, food – to that solitary man, who had been its father, mother, and childhood companion. As a result, already grown and in our keep, its natural affection and the warmth of its heart, so to speak, was directed toward men. It accepted women’s caresses equably, but no sooner did a man approach than it spread out its paws at once.

Tutankamón, which was what the children had called it, was innocence itself in the face of life’s perils. No one is ignorant of the fact that coatis and dogs are antagonists in the animal kingdom. Tutankamón drove away the dogs that barked in its midst, throwing himself at them … to play with them.

His heart was that of a man and no other creature. He reserved his most lively antipathy for a coati skin that he carried round the house and sniffed without respite, deeply burying his snout in every part, until he pulled out all the hairs, as if that skin belonged to his worst enemy among the species. He ate however much he could. Whatever it happened to be, he awaited it on two paws. He especially loved oranges, which he scratched and scratched speedily with his claws until he opened them. If we gave them to him cut up, he scratched them just the same.

Whatever hour of the day we passed by his hut, he was ready to sleep for a moment in our arms. If we did not gather him, he climbed as high as our chests nonetheless and instantaneously fell into a deep dream.

Dreams of caresses, in vain, because his paws never remained still for more than a moment: pockets constituted too powerful a temptation for him.

Thus the cigarettes I carried in my shirt pocket were damaged by contact with the coati. Within a moment of falling asleep, clinging to my neck, I would feel Tutankamón’s silent hand in my pocket though his eyes would still be beatifically shut. I would then reproach him for his bad deed, his abuse of my trust, with words that he understood perfectly well, I am sure, to judge by the way he remained unmoving with shame and sorrow. But while I continued speaking to him, I noticed him look at me out of the corner of his sleepy little eyes while his paw slowly climbed once more toward the cigarettes.

Our coati did not fall victim to his curiosity. He is still alive, though at a distance from us. I know, however, of another coati, suffering from a stomach tumour, that opened up the abscess with his own claws, appearing content with the result because he no longer had to worry himself about that.

But without doubt the scarring stung him and he again used his claws to pick and pick inside until he removed something next to the wound.

His curiosity inflamed, he picked and picked without stopping until he completely emptied his belly on the floor. With that he was finally satisfied and died.

The Gratuity

The Gratuity:

http://www.fairlightbooks.co.uk/short_stories/10-minutes/the-gratuity/