Cloudburst: An Anthology of Hispanic Canadian Short Stories

Metamorphosis II

Jorge Etcheverry 85 Metamorphosis II It’s always been mystifying to me that, except for movie actors and the odd figure with a tragic destiny, such as the Kennedys for example, most successful people are not only outright ugly, but even monstrously so. Somewhere I read that in the countries that were members of the British Empire there is a kind of quota system in the Civil Service, according to which a tiny fraction of the posts at all levels are filled by women, racial minorities and the disabled. More than one far-right organization has attacked this practice both in its propaganda and through its “lobbying” groups, a name given to the practice of trying to persuade politicians to support the interests of the groups that are doing the lobbying. This is an institutional component of the countries referred to, looked on by many with benevolent astonishment, especially when compared to the bloody paths that lead to power and influence in our poor countries. In the same way, the following phenomenonformspartofthissystem :itwouldseemthatthehealthiest and best-looking people, with slender bodies and light hair (or dark, but in general tall and well-proportioned), have more important things to worry about than power and fame. In fact, on my trips (since I ought to mention that I’ve travelled a lot since my transformation began), I’ve happened more than once to visit officials of countries which, though not repositories of a very sophisticated culture, do possess the means to subsidize the arts, and house in their museums the immense majority of the most sublime works the Human Being has produced. On those visits I have been able to appreciate that in those ultramodern—or, on the contrary, archaic, almost medieval—corridors, a gloomy atmosphere assails the traveller. If you stroll along the streets of Ottawa, the capital of the Dominion of Canada, on a summer’s day at about eleven in the morning (the summer there extends from June to August), you will see quantities of tourists ambling about the downtown area. If you have official matters to attend to in the Parliament buildings, or the courthouse, you will notice that, in spite of these being public monuments, profusely Cloudburst 86 covered in posters and commemorative plaques and well supplied with tourist guides, there is almost no one to be seen under the vast, arched roofs, and your footsteps, if you’re obligedtovisitsomepolitician,reverberateundertheenormous vaulted ceilings like the strokes of a bell. Stepping outside and walking no more than a block, you find, on the other hand, the enormous numbers of tourists who pack the cathedral to overflowing, or the National Gallery, even a hotel that is no more than a replica of the very famous one that was destroyed by fire (deliberately, they say) at the turn of the twentieth century. The thing is that the few important civil servants who seem to be suspended in their spacious offices like fish in their aquariums will start to exhibit a more and more distorted appearance—I’m referring to the quality of their human form, not their spiritual attributes, their faces, their expressions, or all of these—to an indescribable extent. Perhaps somebody has by chance already noticed this phenomenon, only to forget it afterwards, since it doesn’t correspond to the type of interpretation of reality that is characteristic of a twentiethcentury adult in the western hemisphere. During the initial stages of my transformation I tried at one point to formulate a theory for my own personal use, since I don’t expect that what I have come to understand, and am now experiencing, will ever become the common legacy of human knowledge. It was a theory that would explain—or rather explain to me (or perhaps restore my peace of mind)—why this deformation does not seem to take place in our countries, or at least not to the same degree. It doesn’t matter what position in culture or politics our contemporaries occupy, the corresponding transformation is kept more or less within certain limits that on very few occasions permit the transition to repulsiveness. Perhaps the power in our countries is never a true, unadulterated power, and the same thing happens with culture, an ambiguous fruit with roots who knows where, but whose grafts of European elements often turn out to be grotesque for a man of the world. Besides, and assuming apointofviewclosertothesocialsciences,thesame(economic, Jorge...