First Day
At this moment, the tiny sphere appears to float in the void. As it was falling, as it is about to rise, there was friction, contact, rubbing, warmth, damp heat that turned to water, waters that evaporate and condense as they envelop it, congealing into ices, frosts, snows, glaciers that cool the sphere whenever they crack it and split it open, spilling out from inside it something that moved like lava and would explode forth from volcanoes, cataclysms rending the earth, raising canyons, ridgelines, hills, mountains where there began to grow an insignificant multitude who would use that heat were they able to perceive it, or if they weren’t, would consume each other, because the explosions have become slow, infrequent, so soft that for some they’re scarcely a rumor.
—The rumor is you’ve got leave the city before Friday.
The voice of someone talking on their phone, they can’t tell if it belongs to the wide-hipped old woman with three shopping bags with distinct brand names occupying two seats, to the university student whose lips hover over the screen of a glowing device, to a foreigner whose big eyes are lost in the window and the darkness of the tunnel as he pinches his earbud, to the girl with dyed hair who opens her backpack to touch her device just as, with a buzzing sound, the door opens and another twenty people enter the metro car where she runs her hands over his body, slipping them into his pockets, sliding them across his belt buckle, across the skin just visible between his pants and jacket as he reaches up to grab the handrail and shuts his eyes, because he can’t stand to see the reflection of those identical signs again, on the ceiling, on the floor, on the walls, on the seatbacks, on people’s clothes, around their necks—wherever he looks. Then she takes him by the hand and, without having to ask, pulls them away from that train, that station, that platform, that bus, that terminal, that hostel where they sleep, that abandoned dirt road, that distant stream at the base of the hill, the uninhabited valley, the monstrous vegetation, the nameless desert where, at last, they’re alone, she, he, with nothing but two bottles of water and the notebook where, in white ink, they’ve written these stories.
Second Day
He became aware of the pulsing in his fingers every time he slipped them between hers; she was beginning to think her tongue and lips were getting swollen, so she stopped reading and was quiet. The only sounds came from their stomachs. And also, they thought, from their eyes. He’d asked her to blow on the backs of his eyelids—sand seemed to be sticking to them—in vain, because though she never told him this, it was almost impossible to see him in the glare; she thought that right then and all throughout the day the aching brightness of the desert was scraping the backs of their eyes as if they were transparent.
The only sounds came from their stomachs, interrupted every so often by their ravenous, frightened voices:
—Did you hear that?
The deprivation made them cold, even there, in the midday heat, as he washed between his legs, peeled his sweaty body off hers, rolled over on the ground, and asked her again about the storms, about the rain, and about whether or not it’d ever hailed in the desert. Her laughter became a spasm, so they stayed still, ran hands over their faces, which made them salivate, because the taste of their sweat brought with it a desperate memory of the seasonings they’d used—until two days ago—in the kitchen over the years, every weekend and even on nights when, after a hard day at work, they weren’t hungry but needed to make rice, a salad, some veggies in soy sauce at least so that their bodies could once again have something in common, they both thought but never said. She tilted her buzzing head at a slight angle, casting a soft shadow across the notebook, which she held a few centimeters from her eyes to read and keep them entertained; and yet, the smell of the paper, of the white ink, of the glue in the spine were unbearable until the last word.
She let her fingers untwine from his, got to her feet, and walked with long strides to the pile of clothes, from which she extracted one of the bottles of lukewarm water. She took a few gulps, and when he turned to watch her from a distance, she started spitting the water up into the air, laughing at her own imitation of a fountain.
As she rewrapped the bottle in what, until yesterday, had been her favorite pants, her eyes fell on a reddish stone lying in the shadow her body projected across the ground. She bent down slowly to examine it, ignoring a turmeric-flavored twinge that called out from a place inside her body that she no longer recognized: a seashell twisted in the cool ocean water before fossilizing on the stone she held in her hand, which, after running over, she reached out to show to him.
They talked about the times they’d seen fossils: he, on an excursion to the mountains when he was a kid, and she, through the glass at the museum. She was fascinated because she’d never gotten to touch one before, and yet it was just a stone with an unusual shape, she said. When the sun began to drop out of sight and they felt lighter, she told him about the proverb that a man—whom she had spent a whole afternoon talking to in Osaka about bulimia, abstinence, and deprivation—had drawn for her on a napkin. And then she moved her finger across the sand:
※ミイラ取りがミイラになる
But it was already night and not a single star hung in the huge, sheltering sky, so as they held each other and gently fell asleep, he asked her what those letters he could no longer see meant. And she told him word for word, as if in a dream: “Be careful hunting mummies lest you yourself become one.”
Third Day
His breathing became a bell in his crystalline throat and was music, music that came from nowhere, music that played in the slow heat of the wide desert for no living being but them. Like a melody humming inside their peeled bodies, she thought wordlessly: his voice hung on the final words of the chapter even after his mouth stopped moving.
She became aware of the phenomenon, blinking in the wavering halo of the naked body that came and climbed on top of hers, imperceptible like the stain of a sweltering midday desert on her pupil, and they stayed in the sun for hours, holding each other, moving only their pelvises to feel pleasure shoot through them and drain them of what once they called weariness. Skin, sweat on skin, the aura of slick vapor that no longer stung, because they imagined they were lighter, because at last they’d forgotten their hunger.
She wanted to talk about mummies and fossils, bones and the liquid we all keep in our marrow forever, my God; he about angels and how in the celestial spheres there was music, but no air, no wind, no breath, no sighs, no coughs, no sneezes, no throat clearings, no moans, no yawns, no laughter. They held hands, moving their pelvises though they felt more like stones, lying on the ground, eyes staring up at the sky every second—each one lasting an afternoon, an eternity—watching the clouds burn off and scatter, red against blue before, once again, night fell completely, and found them sleeping, holding hands, singing.
They’d forgotten where they left the water bottles. They dreamed in the sun and awoke, not caring that the dunes offered them both the same path. The blank pages of the white notebook offered blank characters that they read as if they were musicians, closing their eyes and playing their score, overwhelmed by the sound that came from their fingers and the fingers of the other.
Fourth Day
There were moments when words from childhood that they thought forgotten came to them out of nowhere, some even echoing in their minds at night, as they slept, but that was all there was: they didn’t speak, they didn’t say each other’s names as they lay among the dunes, they felt neither hot nor cold, just that the flesh that covered them was heavier now, as they bent together, panting, on the sand. And after, while he dozed, she made involuntary sketches, passing her sandy hand across his back, as she slowly read him pages from the notebook, singing because all that came from her mouth now were noises that made them laugh.
They fell asleep in the sun; when they woke up they were fucking, coming, she was walking toward the horizon and he came up from behind to surprise her, and pulled her down so they could fuck again quickly, slowly, feverishly, even as night fell and the desert woke up covered in a thin layer of ice that made them slip and fall whenever they jumped. The pain was imperceptible, as was the pleasure; and yet, whenever their bodies pulled apart and they heard her sounds, whenever they ran faster, whenever the wind grew stronger, whenever they looked over and saw the eyes of the other above their own, their smile, their open arms, they experienced something more than head, heart, stomach, veins, each vein, blood, each pulse of blood: they expanded and contracted alternately to infinity.
Until, on one of their races, they found the skeleton. The sun was already dipping—red—below a distant dune, so when they stopped they couldn’t tell if the outcropping blocking their path was bone, a rock formation, or a desiccated tree trunk. In his eyes was the certainty that they should turn back. In hers, the firm conviction to go around that place and press onward. Words had returned, in an episode they read in the notebook about a man and a woman who turned into mummies. Or as a fossil that—they remembered all of a sudden—she’d found in that exact place a few days before.
Neither of them wanted to touch the outcropping. They didn’t say a word. They just parted.
Fifth Day
It was the hottest day yet. She walked without looking back, without waiting for him, but her slow and deliberate stride, the firmness of her footsteps, left behind a trail in the sand: on the other side of the outcropping she would find the water bottles, then she would run back to him.
Morning found her walking across sand so dense it was impossible to leave tracks. Her feet ached, but she pressed insistently on, the immensity of it all giving her such a thrill that, as the sun warmed her bones and skin, the memory of his sweaty body drifted away across the desert horizon. She kept moving with no human breathing to accompany her now, nothing but the sweat streaming down her body; the white notebook, the laughter, the panting had been replaced by a whisper commingling with the silence. It was a pleasant whisper, and around midday, she felt compelled to stop and listen to it, to figure out who was making that sound, but then she strained her eyes, and in the distance, she saw him, a naked, tremulous figure standing there, motionless, watching her.
A stab in her chest made her realize the voices were coming from inside her own body. Her thirst was returning, she decided to go back to him, but the naked figure was no longer visible on the horizon, and suddenly, he was there, walking stride for stride alongside her. In an instant: she looked him in the eyes and he was different.
She kept walking, not looking up (she didn’t let him touch her when he reached out a hand), not pausing when the sand gave way to stones and then to hard black rock that cut the soles of her feet until they bled. And when she heard him speak, she knew he was an imposter:
—I found the water bottles.
She walked on as if she hadn’t heard him. The tanned body of the imposter moved to block her way; he smiled cruelly.
—If you come with me, I’ll turn these rocks into water. And bread.
She shut her eyes and ran as fast as she could, until she was far away, alone.
She sat down in the sun to let her wounded skin begin to scar over; as the sweat evaporated from her shoulders, she returned to the calm of the silence, to sounds that came from her body and that only she could hear.
She stood up to walk back, but was interrupted by the noise, the voice of the imposter now coming from the mouth of a woman—naked, sweet smelling, hair long and flowing—who’d appeared beside her:
—So, you like to run. I propose a race. A race to wherever he is, and then we’ll see if he’d rather fuck you or me. For in many books it’s been written: man cannot resist a strange sensual woman.
The imposter began to run. But she just stood there, not reacting. She waited until the figure vanished into the distant dunes and beyond, and then continued on her way, step by step, in the silence, alone again.
She walked and walked. The memory of the whisper and the silence, of her body, even of herself, began to fade. As night fell, she found herself effortlessly climbing toward the sharpest of peaks until she reached a high summit and, looking down the other side, saw an unfathomable abyss of black rock opening out and swallowing all the places she’d once recognized as oceans, beaches, valleys, mountains, plains, jungles, savannas, glaciers. In that instant, she forgot all of that too. But somewhere behind her, in that last desert, a memory—a memory of him—called to her.
—It would be so easy to push you right now.
It was the voice of the imposter. These words came from a column of fire, crackling and slowly creeping toward her.
—Come with me and you’ll finally be truly weightless. Throw yourself off right now, I’ll hold you aloft.
Still, she made no response. She felt the fire start to singe her already peeling, sunburned skin, but she wanted to use the dwindling daylight to see how the lines of stone descended from that rocky summit, disappearing into the dunes, coming to an end in an odd outcropping, like a skeleton. That’s where he would be.
The imposter insisted:
—Worship me.
She moved without hesitation through the column of fire and began her descent to the desert floor. The imposter became a blazing inferno that surrounded her like an enormous succession of multiplying images, raging, roaring:
—Stay with me. Don’t go. I’ll give you everything if you don’t leave me alone.
Then—as if she hadn’t yet looked into that abyss of black rock—he showed her all the realms of the world and the greatest one of all.
Sixth Day
He rested his head atop the black rock and hoped never to move again. He’d gotten to his feet just once: blind, body parts that were once (before words were gone) called muscles stiff, wobbling from dune to dune through the dizziness, until sunstroke forced him to empty his stomach for what he hoped was the last time. Then he sat still and saw, heard, felt that what’d come out of him was congealing, hardening. When the sun’s most painful brightness had moved past the meridian, he touched the new stone: he realized it was made of an opaque substance similar to the outcropping in the desert. He remembered her, and remembered hunger, and that once they ate and drank together. Then, with great effort, he dragged himself back to that dark point in the desert, to the outcropping where she’d disappeared. Aching, he tucked the white notebook between his head and the rock. To one side, he set down the two objects he’d brought with him without meaning to—the new stone and the fossil. A cracking echoed from somewhere as he lay down, stretching out what once were called arms and legs and spine in the sun.
He felt he was beginning to definitely desiccate, to crystallize, when with nightfall the cold came. He hadn’t rested since she left. When he closed his eyes, he was confused, because the blazing sun still lingered on the backs of his eyelids, he didn’t know if he was awake or asleep, if he was shivering with cold or boiling; and yet, suddenly, he knew it was morning, a kind of dew had settled across the surface of the desert, the light made the sand glow. Beside him, one of the stones had become a seed: it had sprouted a stem, and rapidly, imperceptibly, it had grown, sending out first branches and then leaves. When at last the sun appeared, the tree provided shade, allowing him to look up through the branches, where he saw a singular growth.
He stood up and moved toward it, drawn not only by its roundness, its glow, the freshness of its color, but because the weariness in his body seemed to have vanished with the night. The feeling in his mouth had returned, saliva flowed, and a voice spoke in his ear:
—See that fruit? If you eat it you could be yourself again. You won’t die. You’ll have enough strength to cross the dunes and find her, and the two of you could leave together.
He saw a strange creature gliding across the trunk, a long, living shape that quickly concealed itself, granting him only a glimpse. But he heard its voice clearly.
—Ask and you shall receive. Eat.
But the intense color of the fruit conjured memories of other food, and then sensations of hunger, indigestion, deprivation, fasting, of the desire to be alone with her in the desert, and finally the evocation of the days and nights and days and nights spent in that place that’d led him to that moment. Then he saw that the second stone—the fossil they’d found together—had disappeared. There was just the white notebook; and in the shade of the tree, he reread the third chapter, where he recognized the serpent, the tree, and the man and woman ashamed of their nakedness after eating the fruit. And he no longer had any desire to bite the fruit, best not take anything from that tree until it’d grown tall enough to multiply, until there were as many new trees as fruit.
Then she was there, in front of him. Out of breath, laughing because, along the path of black stone, she’d found the water bottles, but she’d left them behind. As he stood up to take her in his arms, he saw the serpent coming at him and had to move quickly to avoid being bitten. As he watched the creature disappear into the dunes—just so it could reappear at the right moment—he knew its bite would’ve been fatal.
That night, they were able to sleep again.
Seventh Day
When the two of them woke, they went looking for the water bottles. They thought they would find them along the stone path that wound through the indistinct sands: she’d seen them there. But they didn’t have to walk far to realize they’d never drink from those bottles again—they would never find them. And they no longer cared when they saw how what the day before had been an outcropping of sharp black rock had been transformed into white stone with a polished surface that felt good underfoot and across which flowed a crystalline stream that had grown plentiful, expanding out into a body of water that surrounded the tree. On the bank, dozens more lush trees had grown tall overnight and were full, weighed down with every kind of fruit, swaying in the breeze.
They sat down between sun and shadow, dangling their feet in the river of life: that was the name it was given, they read, on a page of the notebook—the book of life. That was the title they found—written on the back in uppercase letters—above the long string of white letters that ended with their names. They closed the book and went to bury it in the only remaining dune. The work made them thirsty, but they had already decided never to drink again. They just sat there, hands intertwined, watching as a last, indescribably tall tree, the greatest tree of all, grew before them, in the exact spot where the book had been laid to rest.
Then it began to rain. 
Carlos Labbé was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1977. He has published two collections of short stories and nine novels, three of which—Navidad & Matanza, Loquela, and Spiritual Choreographies—have been translated into English. He has also published essays and poems, and he cowrote the screenplays for two feature films, Malta con huevo (2007) and El nombre (2015). A prolific musician, Labbé was a member of the bands Ex Fiesta and Tornasólidos and has released five solo albums. He has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in literature, works as a literary critic, writes columns on music and politics, and has been part of the publishing collective Sangría Editora since its founding in 2008.
Will Vanderhyden is a freelance translator, with an MA in literary translation from the University of Rochester. He has translated the work of Carlos Labbé, Rodrigo Fresán, Fernanda García Lao, and Juan Villoro, among others. His translations have appeared in journals such as Two Lines, The Literary Review, The Scofield, The Arkansas International, Future Tense, and Southwest Review. He has received fellowships from the NEA and the Lannan Foundation. His translation of The Invented Part by Rodrigo Fresán won the 2018 Best Translated Book Award.
