Made in Saturn
Contents ( 4)
First published in English in 2020 by And Other Stories
Sheffield – London – New York
www.andotherstories.org
First published as Hecho en Saturno by Editorial Periférica in 2018
Copyright © Rita Indiana c/o Schavelzon Graham Agencia Literaria, 2020
English-language translation © Sydney Hutchinson, 2020
All rights reserved. The right of Rita Indiana to be identified as author of this work and of Sydney Hutchinson to be identified as the translator of this work has been asserted.
ISBN: 9781911508601
eBook ISBN: 9781911508618
Editor: Bella Bosworth; Copy-editor: Gesche Ipsen; Proofreader: Sarah Terry; Typesetting and eBook: Tetragon, London; Cover design: Steven Marsden.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
And Other Stories gratefully acknowledge that our work is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.
In memory of Milagros Dottin
Contents
- Made in Saturn
- Note to the Reader
- Current and Upcoming Books
- About the Author and Translator
Come down off your throne and leave your body alone
Somebody must change
You are the reason I’ve been waiting so long
Somebody holds the key
Well, I’m near the end and I just ain’t got the time
And I’m wasted and I can’t find my way home.
‘Can’t Find My Way Home’, Blind Faith
Made in Saturn
Doctor’s office light. Dull light, wet behind a hood of clouds that sank the shoulders of the horizon. Dull, like the orthopaedic shoes of Dr. Bengoa, like the folder on which the doctor had written the name of his new patient, Argenis Luna, who was just coming off a Cubana Airlines flight, dizzy and dripping a pasty, cold sweat. Bengoa was waiting for him on the tarmac in his wrinkled, champagne-colored guayabera shirt, both hands on a sign whose bold letters he had filled in impeccably.
As soon as he recognized Argenis, the doctor came over to take his pulse while looking at his wristwatch. As they walked down the tarmac to pick up his bags he introduced him to the young soldier escorting them, saying, “This is the son of José Alfredo Luna.” The palm trees defied the lightning’s flashes against the gray background of the clouds, and in spite of his malaise Argenis thought it was beautiful. The air was charged and he breathed with difficulty, his nose running like an open faucet. Now at the baggage carousel, Bengoa spoke again to the soldier, adding, “My comrade José Alfredo is a hero of the Dominican urban guerrilla war and a student of Professor Juan Bosch.”
Argenis’s bags dropped out onto the carousel just as Bosch surfaced into the conversation. They rode all the way around before he could be bothered to identify them, before he could be bothered to interrupt Bengoa. The heroic attributes Dr. Bengoa was listing orbited eternally around his father’s legend, and Argenis along with them, just another satellite, like the red fabric suitcases on the belt. He had no strength to grab them, full as they were of the stuff his mother had bought to outfit his detox treatment in Cuba. He pointed them out with his finger and pulled the hood of his jacket up to combat the air-conditioning and the embarrassment of his obvious weakness. For months he had been living on the sofas of those friends who could still stand him, his only property a green Eastpak backpack he used to hold his syringes, his spoon, and a Case Logic full of CDs. His mother had thrown everything into the trash except the CDs and the backpack, which now held a bottle of Barceló Imperial rum as a gift for Dr. Bengoa and a big box of Frosted Flakes.