In the end, we are here because of something much bigger than the games and traps of identity. We do not have much strength, and maybe it is better, from now on, to lower our arms in resignation. We try to protect the weakest, who, like us, have picked the short straw … but we doubt we can do it. We try to be gender-inclusive down here, and pro-animal, superficially pluralistic.

Who is consuming whom? Does the earth consume men, consume women, or do men-women-consume earth? We cannot answer that last question, and our ignorance is so ironic …Īll around us, potatoes, rutabaga, and other tubers sprout, grow, and sometimes die among the earthworms and the chemical fertilizer, among the molars of the vegan men and vegan women. Then why has she come to this two-bit town? To do the dirty work, to unearth our dry bones (metaphorically speaking) and revive us only to reignite the fury of the bonfire and burn us again? Why has Paula come to delve into this pit, enlarging it, disturbing the atoms, and then disinfecting it with quicklime like a hired cleaner or a gardener who only grows chrysanthemums? Why does she want to put names to these remains? Does Paula want to purge her own hidden guilt, like someone who has fattened a pig for the feast of San Antón and then made sausages without washing their hands? Is she bored? What country is she from? And her sin? What drives Paula to break her fingernails in the hard-packed dirt and fill her lungs with dust as she tries to clean the jawbone of a man, probably a good man, who lived just an instant on this earth and then consumed it forever? I can feel the tickle of her brush on my mandible. We know that Paula’s memories do not belong to this place. God does not exist-we are proof of that-and down here we always wear a smile. We are the lost children and the dead women. We were from here, but also from elsewhere.

Marta animal translation