Samanta Schweblin

A young man travels with his girlfriend to Atlántida, a coastal resort in Uruguay, to spend a few days in a borrowed house. From the moment he arrives, he feels uneasy, as if something about the place doesn’t quite fit. Soon he begins to notice the silent presence of an elderly woman who appears walking along the beach or near the village paths. Although he sees her on several occasions, no one else seems to notice her. Intrigued, he becomes obsessed with this distant figure, convinced that she is watching him. One early morning, he decides to follow her to a secluded spot. When he finally catches up with her, the woman stops and looks at him silently. There is no threat, only an enigmatic presence. The young man then realizes that this figure embodies something that has always been inside him, something he can no longer avoid.

The director of a residential facility for patients with mild psychiatric disorders receives an unexpected visit from a high-ranking institutional official, the Superior. His arrival disrupts the routine and creates a palpable tension throughout the center. Throughout the day, the Superior tours the facilities, observes how the place operates, and briefly converses with an inmate who greets him as if he knows him. Before leaving, he leaves the director a folder with a decision already made: that patient must be transferred to another unit. Although there are no obvious clinical reasons, the order is firm. Alone in her office, the woman contemplates the blank sheet of paper where she must sign, understanding that she is about to execute someone else’s decision, but one that is final.

A man returns to his hometown after his mother’s death and, shortly thereafter, begins to feel a persistent pain in his throat. No doctor can find a clear cause. One night, in front of the mirror and with the help of a flashlight, he discovers something disturbing: at the back of his throat there is an eye watching him. The presence of the eye isolates him, disturbs him, fills him with shame and fear. He feels that it is watching him from within, as if it knows something that he himself does not. Although he tries to reconnect with others, no one seems to notice his transformation. Over time, he understands that the eye will not go away. It has been with him for much longer than he imagined, and he will have to live with that gaze fixed inside him forever.

During a writers’ residency in Shanghai, an Argentine writer keeps in regular telephone contact with Andrés, her sick partner in Buenos Aires. While working on a novel about a mother rejected by her daughter, she meets Denyse, an older Irish writer who has lost her composure because her cat William has been poisoned. Although the animal recovers, Denyse admits that she could not live without him, even though he technically belongs to her husband. The protagonist, identifying with that bond, confesses that if Andrés died, she might die too. She finds comfort in the small gestures of shared life, such as the mark he leaves every day on the bathroom tiles. When Denyse celebrates her birthday with an impromptu dinner in her room, the two women share a quiet intimacy, sustained by affection, fear, and the small rituals that bind us to life.

Leila, an Argentine architect living in Europe, receives a call from her old friend Elena, who is dying and wants to talk about her son Peta, who died twenty years ago in an accident. Leila remembers that night when she was visiting the family in Buenos Aires and shared an intimate moment with the sensitive and creative boy, who confessed his desire to become a horse. They played at “practicing” being horses, and shortly afterwards he fell from the ledge. In shock, Leila went out into the street and found an injured horse, which she clung to as if it were an echo of the boy. In the present, Elena just wants to hear something about her son, and finally asks Leila to tell her where the horse is. Leila offers her an ambiguous, symbolic answer, as if she could give her one last comfort.

In “Welcome to the Club,” a woman attempts suicide by throwing herself into a lake with stones tied around her waist, but survives and returns home. Her family arrives shortly after with a school rabbit named Tonel. As she tries to act normal, the animal escapes and triggers a frantic search. The neighbor brutally returns it and then confronts the woman: he has seen her suicide attempt and demands that she face the consequences. That night, she visits him and he forces her to skin animals as part of a strange ritual. He tells her that if she wants to stay alive, she must inflict pain on herself every day or cause it to someone she loves. Later, the woman faces the possibility of killing her daughters’ rabbit, but she lets it go. She closes the window through which she had entered when she returned from the lake and, in doing so, realizes that she can still hold her own in the world, even if her balance remains precarious.