“Son como perros que no son perros…” (‘They're like dogs that are not dogs’, Zorros de Londres)
The writer of EL TRAPECISTA is Mario Flecha. Born in Buenos Aires in 1949 of Paraguayan heritage, Flecha is also a craftsman, an art magazine editor, (the founder of the Untitled magazine) and the Jafre Beinnal and the Museo de las Palabras (The Word Museum) in Jafre, Catalunya, Spain. His previous works include Truco Gallo (co-authored with Viqui Rosenberg and Gregorio Kohon), Professor Monday Zofana and Anastasia’s Toes and Other Stories.
Here in the collection of short stories in EL TRAPECISTA, Flecha opens a box of curiosities. With unexpected dollops of black humour and irony, he weaves his way around his characters, who all too often, are trapped by their own unresolved fears and desires. They are tales of the unexpected, playing with what we assume to be a logic and then twisting the narrative onto another route towards the absurd, always with his mischievous attitude and humour.
Book cover
Many of the tales are written in the first person, creating an intimacy and a believability, despite the often-eccentric mishaps the characters encounter. Flecha instils a distinct autobiographical feel into some of the stories, especially to those that are encased in the atmosphere of the tensions of the Argentine Dirty War (during the Military Dictatorship of the 1970s). With throw-away background details, Flecha conveys a sensation of the dangers and the horrors that were perpetrated during that difficult time. An immigrant to the UK, who has also lived in Spain, Flecha inevitably experiences some of the emotions of a person exiled from his own land. There are moments where you can feel an air of nostalgia seeping in, wrapped in a deep affection for the wiles and idiosyncrasies of the city of Buenos Aires and its ‘porteño’ inhabitants, particularly those living abroad.
“Yo perdido en un pueblo de Ampurdán escribiendo cuentos que nadie lee.” (Lost in a town in Ampurdán, writing stories that no one will read). Pezones Envenenados ( Poisoned Nipples)
Mario Flecha reads from his publication
Veering from black humour to the absurd, these stories fly past and provide an enjoyable and thought-provoking read. They are short, playful and yet intense, for here is a writer who loves to look behind every detail, to delve ever deeper, so these tales are dotted with snippets of the story behind the story behind the story… leaving unanswered questions while he teases us with irony and humour, and even the macabre. With an air of wonder and even lost dreams that have melted into the past, there is also a nod to writers like Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind).
In Mala Suerte, it is suggested that Cervantes’ Don Quijote plagiarized some the writings of the wild conquistador and founder of the city of Bogotá, Don Gonzálo Ximenes de Queixada I Ribera,( phew) who had written about his adventures in 1536, valiantly fighting disease, poisoned arrows and the impenetrable jungle, when trying to find the fabled city of El Dorado deep in the Amazon. A story within a story, these little asides are gripping and fascinating, no more so than the characters going to a restaurant that was once a bar, run by a docklands prostitute, Dora, and apparently frequented by no other than Eugene O’Neill. So, these snippets are fed in, and at times become the theme itself as in LA CINTA MAGNETICA (The Magnetic Tape) where a mysterious tape, recorded in Spain, of the ousted Argentine dictator Juan Domingo Perón, is clandestinely handed to the protagonist where the highly illegal item ‘burns a hole in his pocket’. Needless to say, the story’s denouement turns out to be quite unexpected. Another of the most delightful stories is ‘Anastasia’s toes’ in that it is so believable that a teenager, imbued with youthful love, could entertain the thoughts and dilemmas that torment his mind in this tale.
We have to hope that these stories will be translated into English soon, possibly by his previous translator Camilla Balmer who did a fine job on Anastasia’s Toes and Other Stories. The writer and critic Ramsey Wood thinks these stories evoke Gogol, even Kafka, Borges and wild tales like Bulgakov’s The Master & Margarita. He has spotted the off- the-wall characteristics that permeate Flecha’s work. This book of collected stories is an enjoyably eccentric mélange of humour with the absurd.
El TRAPECISTA is available from The Calder Bookshop & Theatre https://calderbookshop.com/Latin-American-poetry-novels
