In “An Eye in the Throat” (El ojo en la garganta), a short story by Samanta Schweblin published in the book El buen mal (2025), a man returns to his hometown after many years, following the death of his mother. He settles into the old family home, empty, damp, and covered in dust. The place, which was once welcoming, now feels hostile and alien to him. Shortly after arriving, he begins to feel a persistent discomfort in his throat. He thinks it is a cold, but the pain quickly intensifies. He decides to consult the local doctor, Dr. Garay, an elderly man who vaguely remembers him. The consultation is cordial but inconclusive: the doctor finds nothing out of the ordinary. He prescribes painkillers and sends him on his way.
The pain does not subside. It becomes sharp, constant, incapacitating. The protagonist can barely swallow or sleep. He lives in silence, avoiding his neighbors, locked in his house. One sleepless night, he locks himself in the bathroom with a flashlight and examines himself in the mirror. When he opens his mouth wide, he sees something unusual: at the back of his throat, there is an eye. A real, motionless eye that stares back at him. He doesn’t scream, he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know if he’s losing his mind, if he’s hallucinating, or if it’s really part of his body.
From then on, his life changes. He can’t talk about it with anyone. He wouldn’t know how. The mere idea of naming it repulses him. He tries to maintain his routine, but the eye is always there, present, silent, watching him. There is no physical pain like before, but now there is something worse: the certainty of being seen from within. He feels that the eye knows him, that it watches him with an intensity that is impossible to sustain. He withdraws further, avoids talking, eats little. Not because he fears the eye, but because he doesn’t know how to deal with it.
In search of comfort, he walks around the village, greets old acquaintances, visits a neighbor who used to take care of him as a child. But everyone treats him with distance. As if he himself had become blurred. Deep down, he knows that no one can help him. He returns home and shuts himself in again. He examines his throat. The eye is still there. It stares at him. There is no explanation, no dialogue, no relief. Only the certainty that this gaze has been inside him for a long time. That it has inhabited him in silence. And that it will not go away.
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