Day 1
I’ll start by explaining what’s happening with the bird, or else I might forget. The bird shows up every night when the sun is going down, a liquid sun like melted cheddar, surrounded by moldy fog that sprouts from the blue branches of dead pines. After circling for a while, the bird perches and pecks at the bits of poisoned meat, which, following the managing entity’s instructions, we’ve set out on the garden wall to entice him. The bird is black, neither large nor small. With his sharp pink eraser of beak, he collects bits of meat and swallows them in exaggerated movements. My wife and I wait for the poison to take effect, or rather, we wait for the bird to be poisoned and die, but that never happens. The poison doesn’t kill him: it makes him talk. And the bird’s speaking voice sounds like something recorded on very old tape. We’ve spent hours debating the source of those voices. Because it’s not just one voice. There are many. My wife has heard talk of birds that can imitate other animals, and she believes they’re voices from much earlier, another era, back when humans still existed; this birdsong must be a vestige, one of the few we still have, proof that before us, there was another, similar species, capable of speech and thought. That species disappeared from the planet mysteriously, and the scientists can’t decipher what little evidence there is. So we don’t know where we came from, either—what animals we’re descended from.
At some point, they reset the clocks, my wife says, looking out at the dead pines like she knows something the rest of us don’t.
As for me, I’m afraid: that the bird won’t die, that the poison isn’t working the way it does on the rest of the animals that show up in our yard. The managing entity’s pamphlets were emphatic about that: the risk of infection is very high; all animals must be exterminated.
When the bird is tired of talking, when he has eaten the last piece of poisoned meat, he flies off, and our baby cries from inside the blue-and-red silk cocoon where he’s still incubating. His cry and the bird’s departure are synchronized somehow, but it’s impossible to tell if there’s a causal relationship, or if two disconnected events have simply overlapped in time.
They’ve already promised that we’ll be evacuated, just like the others before us. We’ll be leaving, if all goes well, for a new planet.
Until then, we wait and do little else, and we’re reasonably happy. Some nights we take a walk through the neighborhood or the dead pine forest. Occasionally, we go dancing.
The managing entity says our house will be the collateral for a similar one wherever we’re relocated.
The property laws are strict about that.
Day 2
Today the inspectors came to examine the baby. Normally they just check the outside of the cocoon, making sure that no mucus has escaped, that the meaty silk petals maintain their texture and color. The contrast between blue and red must be very exact and is measured with a device that can detect specific wavelengths. A small variation in tone could put the infant’s life at risk. Today, however, one inspector donned a latex glove and slid her arm through the superior vulva, all the way to the base of the cocoon.
When she was done feeling around, she looked at us, concerned. Have you noticed anything unusual? she asked. And I was quick to tell them about the bird, though I didn’t tell them everything because my wife pinched my leg to shut me up. I didn’t get to the part about the animal talking, for instance, but I did say that our baby cried every night when the bird flew off.
They said nothing. They just made notes on official forms and announced that within a few days, an exterminator would come to take care of the bird.
My wife was upset. She said my carelessness might have cost us our place on the evacuation list, or maybe worse, who knows. She wouldn’t talk to me all day, until sunset came, and with it the bird, this time especially chatty. He spoke in that same voice, like old magnetic tape, about the ruins of a city in the middle of a forest. He spoke of a garden in the heart of the ruins. He spoke of a tree in the heart of the garden, heavy with golden fruit. Those images must have excited my wife, who began to caress my genitals. So our antennae and cavities and alveoli went unfolding and entangling, so our juices spilled on the ground.
Meanwhile, the bird watched. His voice, recorded, said: Every individual must understand his sentence and must not mistake it with the sentence of the others.
We didn’t even decouple when the baby started to cry. Sex mitigates the impatience.
Day 3
We ride our bikes when it gets dark. Besides us and three other families, everyone in our neighborhood has been evacuated. The managing entity no longer bothers to turn on the streetlights, and it’s not very pleasant to walk around that way, in almost total darkness.
My wife suggests we take a longer trip, down the hill and deep into the tumult of the city. Although that’s just a figure of speech, the tumult—something to mark the slight difference between the absolute desolation of our neighborhood and the nearly empty streets downtown, where at least there are one or two people on every block.
We stop and buy cheap cigarettes at a liquor store, the kind they make with moth wings. My wife likes them better than the nice ones because they make you a little dizzy and more talkative. It’s fun to ride a bike when you’re dizzy. We laugh the whole time.
With nothing better to do, we end up at the club, dancing. There are hardly any couples on the floor, and the space feels huge: the heavy echo of the music makes our movements seem senseless. Dancing like that in an empty club, without the heat of a crowd, is a little ridiculous.
My wife ends up eating the cigarettes. They hit you harder that way. I stay at the table and rest a little. Not her, she wants to dance.
Within minutes, I see her genitalizing with one of the couples next door. The three pairs of antennae form a pleasing and subtle ramification that, under the effect of the colored lights, begins to flower: soon, a milky cloud of iridescent spores rolls through the space. A guy taking drinks to his table hurries across the dance floor and slips on the sweet seminal juices scattered there. He falls on his ass and then does a fabulous somersault.
The dancers help him up, laughing.
The cloud of spores, a reddish stream with multicolored sparks, seeps into all the bodies and alters the quality of the air, such that the music starts to sound slower.
My wife returns to the table, her antennae still dripping and unfolded.
You’re a good woman, she tells me, chewing her cigarettes with a disdain that I can only describe as masculine. You always behave yourself, although sometimes you’re very rash. Yesterday with the inspectors, you made a serious mistake.
Do you forgive me? I say. And she says yes, she forgives me. That what matters is, we hold on and have a good time while we wait for evacuation.
I’m yours, I tell her. She casually replies that she’s mine too. My property.
The air is so dense and heavy that the music barely reaches us, and the dancers move very slowly, extraordinarily slowly.
Day 4
This afternoon, we sat down at the table in the yard and opened a few cans of food: flies, leaf-cutter ants, some pickled worms. Hangover food. Lots of protein. I haven’t been myself the last few days, my wife suddenly said, I want to apologize, sincerely. And at the end of a long silence during which there was only the sound of the chewing and suctioning of the food, she added: I let the bird get to me, the words it was saying.
It’s a good thing the managing entity sent the exterminator today, to take care of the problem once and for all. First, we had to fill out some reports. That part was tedious. The exterminator lost his patience quickly, and our questions seemed to annoy him. Then he asked to see the jar where we kept the poison. He poured it into some test tubes and spent a long time inspecting it. In the end, he announced that our poison was optimal and that it complied with the managing entity’s standards. If it’s not working, he said, it’s because something’s wrong with the animal.
We waited in the yard until the bird, always considerate, arrived with the setting sun. My wife became aroused when she saw it perch on the garden wall. I watched her eyes open wide, two melting chocolate cookies, watched her try to hide the effect it had on her antennae. The exterminator, engaged in his approach, didn’t notice my wife’s secretions.
Then the bird pecked at the poisoned bits of meat and spoke, as on every afternoon, his voice like an old recording. He remembered where he’d come from: the city in ruins, with the garden right in the middle. I nest in a tree bearing golden fruit, in the heart of the heart of the city in ruins, the bird said. My wife, seized by the images, wanted to know what the ruins were like, and above all else, how the fruit tasted. It’s been centuries since anything like an edible fruit existed. There are some fossils in the museums, nothing more, and that’s how we know they were here. The bird went on: The fruits fall to the ground, and we scatter the seeds everywhere in our golden droppings. Then, as if to confirm what he’d just said, the bird took a brief, low flight, to ensure that his defecations were spread evenly across the whole backyard.
The exterminator took advantage of the conditions and brought the animal down with a well-aimed blow.
On the ground, the bird made a final attempt to fly off but couldn’t. His wing was broken. Now, he could only walk awkwardly, flapping his good wing in desperation, looking at us without understanding what was going on.
With the help of a broom, the exterminator finished his task. Then he put the bird’s carcass in a black plastic bag.
I was relieved. My wife, on the other hand, was horrified. To our surprise, the baby didn’t cry that time, and I took it as a sign that better days were ahead for all of us.
While we finished filling out the paperwork to discharge the exterminator, the three of us sat down for a glass of silt. My wife couldn’t hide her distress, so I tried to distract the exterminator with pleasantries. I asked him when his evacuation date was, and he, lighting the moth-wing cigarette I’d offered him, shot me a snide smile that turned my blood cold. Ma’am, they don’t evacuate people like me, he said. I looked at him, appalled. Evidently, we were in the presence of a joker, a cynic. What about you, Your Honor? he said in that same tone. Next year, I said without hesitation. We’re going in the next round.
Well, aren’t you lucky, he said, letting out a puff of smoke, they aren’t relocating people like me, not ever.
Don’t talk like that, I scolded.
I’m serious, he went on, they sent out a notice a few months back.
I’m so sorry to hear that, I said. It was all I could think to say.
My wife, who had been silent until then, asked if that didn’t upset him, if it didn’t make him feel like acting out against the managing entity. And the exterminator shrugged. In the end, it wouldn’t matter, he said. And I remembered what the bird had said the other day, about the sentences corresponding to each individual.
Day 5
Today, for the first time, the baby came out of his cocoon. He went around the house for half an hour, feeling his way along, of course, since he still can’t open his eyes.
Everything about him is normal: his weight, his color, his size. I’ve been pleased with the creature’s development. When I went to put him back in the cocoon, sure enough, the silk changed color, the hues shifting toward orange and green.
My wife is still shaken by what happened with the bird, and she seems to have lost interest in our little project. Sometimes she acts like the baby is only mine.
I need to be patient with her. I need to be patient with everything, and wait.
Day 6
Early this morning, the moldering fog carried the smell of burnt plastic to our window. We were kids when I last tasted it. The perfume of something burning all night on a nearby mountain: someone trying to keep warm, no doubt. Inspired by that quaint aroma, my wife suggested a walk in the dead pine forest. We strolled along in silence on a path of quartz and small petrified turtle shells.
Although it’s dead, the forest is still a beautiful place. Gusts of blue-green spores are entangled in the branches. Look at that, my wife said, this planet is going to end up at the mercy of mold. New life forms will evolve from this infinity of spores. I explained that science had discredited all those fantasies, that life here was completely unviable, and that’s why they had launched the evacuation project. Where are these spores going? she went on. What about the spores we’re making now? Haven’t you noticed that lately, when we genitalize, these spore banks are scattered everywhere? I had no choice but to agree.
Around that time, we heard the crunch of footsteps. From among the trees, there emerged the figure of a blind old woman, guiding herself along by the feel of the trunks.
Good afternoon, Granny, I said. And the old woman smiled. She was dressed in worn animal skins patched up again and again, and her general appearance was unkempt and dirty, lichen encrusting her dorsal antlers, the plumage on her buttocks bristling with white pine weevils. It was obvious that this grandmother wasn’t signed up for any evacuation plan. She must have been infected.
We stayed at a safe distance, but we didn’t want to be rude. We offered to help her and asked if she’d like something to eat. The old woman crouched down to rest. I’ve come from very far away, she said, breathing heavily. I lost my bird, and I’ve been looking for him for days. You didn’t happen to see him pass through here, did you? He’s a blackbird, very smart, friendly, he likes to talk to people.
We kept quiet, incapable of lying, incapable of telling her the truth.
My wife had a bag of leaf-cutter ants in her purse, and she offered them to the old woman, who took them with another grateful smile. You young ladies are very kind, she said. Now, if you’ll forgive me, I need to carry on. I have to find that bird.
The grandmother stood with an effort and, grasping at fossilized trunks, took up her march again.
We continued along the same path, but in the opposite direction, moving deeper and deeper into the forest. The quartz decomposed the afternoon light, and the path glinted.
It’s so pretty here, don’t you think? I said, trying to sense my wife’s mood. It is very pretty, she said, smiling softly. I’m almost sad we’re leaving. 
Juan Cárdenas is a Colombian art critic, curator, translator, and author of the books Zumbido (451 Editores, 2010; Periférica, 2017), Los estratos (Periférica, 2013), Ornamento (Periférica, 2015), Tú y yo, una novelita rusa (Cajón de sastre, 2016) and El diablo de las provincias (Periférica, 2017), among others. He has translated the works of such writers as William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Gordon Lish, David Ohle, J. M. Machado de Assis, and Eça de Queirós. In May 2017 he was named one of the thirty-nine best Latin American writers under the age of thirty-nine by the Hay Festival in Bogotá. Cárdenas currently coordinates the masters program in creative writing at the Caro y Cuervo Institute in Bogotá, where he works as a professor and researcher.
Lizzie Davis is a translator from Spanish to English and an editor at Coffee House Press. Her translation of Juan Cárdenas’s Ornamental was published by Coffee House Press in 2020. Other recent projects include works by Pilar Fraile Amador, Daniela Tarazona, and Elena Medel. Her co-translation of Medel’s Las maravillas with Thomas Bunstead is forthcoming from Pushkin Press in 2021.
