Traveller_Levin's Blog

Vast Hell

by Guillermo Martínez

Guillermo Martínez  (1962 – ) 出生於阿根廷的Bahía Blanca。自布宜諾斯艾利斯大學獲得數理邏輯博士學位，曾於牛津大學數學系進行後博士班工作兩年，除數理邏輯外對哲學亦有相當程度的涉獵，他同時是位知名的長篇小說、散文、短篇小說作家。他兩部長篇小說都被翻譯成多國語言且拍成電影。短篇小說Vast Hell於2009年4月27日刊載於美國紐約客雜誌，繼Jorge Luis Borges之後，作品刊載於紐約客雜誌的第二位阿根廷作家。

A small town is a vast hell. 1

—Argentinean proverb.

Often, when the grocery store is empty and all you can hear is the buzzing of flies, I think of that young man whose name we never knew and whom no one in town ever mentioned again. For some reason that I can’t explain, I always imagine him as we saw him that first time: the dusty clothes, the bristling beard2, and especially the long, dishevelled hair that almost covered his eyes. It was the beginning of spring, which is why, when he came into the store, I took him for a camperheaded south3. He bought a few cans of food and some coffee; as I added up the bill, he looked at his reflection in the window, brushed his hair off his forehead, and asked me if there was a barber in town.

In those days, there were two barbers in Puente Viejo. Now I realize that if he’d gone to Old Melchor’s4 he might never have met the French Woman, and no one would have gossiped about them. But Melchor’s place was at the other end of town, and I had no reason to anticipate what happened.5

1.   阿根廷諺語：小鎮是個無間地獄。原先諺語的意思可能指偏僻封閉的地方容易隱藏不法罪惡或傷風敗俗之事，也可能指小鎮裡人們閒著慌，愛嚼舌根，流言蜚語是非多，那裏像個地獄般。當讀完全篇，讀者對於此諺語之引用或許會有不同的見解。

2.    bristle指毛髮豎立或尖刺叢立。bristling beard鬍鬚雜亂叢生。

3.   take for：regard as. I took him for a camper headed south我以為他是要去南方露營的人。本篇敘事者(我)是雜貨店老闆。

4.   英文中常常會看到用人名/表示職業的名詞形成所有格，而將所有格後面的家或店省略，代表某人/該業者的家或店。美國餐廳常用此人名形成所有格當店名，最著名的像McDonald’s。Melchor’s指Melchor的理髮店。

底下提到那年輕人每天都到理髮店報到—every single day he visited the barber’s.

5.   年輕人問雜貨店老闆鎮上哪裡有理髮店，老闆介紹他去Cerviño的店(因為比較近)，當時怎知會惹出這麼多事來。

The fact is that I sent him to Cerviño’s place, and it seems that while Cerviño was giving him a haircut the French Woman appeared. And the French Woman looked at the boy the way she looked at all men. And that was when the bloody business started, because the boy stayed on in town and we all thought the same thing: that he’d stayed on because of her.

It hadn’t been a year since Cerviño and his wife had settled in Puente Viejo, and we knew very little about them. They didn’t socialize with anyone, as the whole town used to point out angrily. If the truth be told, in poor Cerviño’s case it was little more than shyness, but the French Woman may, in fact, have been quite stuck up6. They’d come from the big city the previous summer, at the beginning of the season, and when Cerviño opened his barbershop I remember thinking that he’d soon send Old Melchor under7, because he had a hairdresser’s diploma and had won a prize in a crewcutting 8 competition, and he owned a pair of electric clippers, a hair dryer, and a swivel chair, and he would sprinkle vegetable extracts onto your scalp9 and even spray some lotion on you if you didn’t stop him in time. Also, in Cerviño’s shop the latest sports magazine was always in the rack. And, above all, there was the French Woman. I never actually knew why people called her the French Woman, and I never tried to find out—I’d have been disappointed to discover that the French Woman was born, for instance, in Bahía Blanca, or, even worse, in a small town like this one. Whatever the truth10, the fact is that I’d never met a woman quite like her. Maybe it was simply that she didn’t wear a bra: even in winter you could see that she wasn’t wearing a thing under her sweater. Or maybe it was her habit of appearing in the barbershop barely dressed11 and putting on her makeup in the mirror, right there in front of everyone. But that wasn’t it12. There was something even more disturbing about the French Woman than her body, which always seemed uneasy in its clothes, even more unsettling than the low plunge of her neckline. She would stare into your eyes steadily, until you had to look down, and her eyes were full of incitement, full of promise, but they also had a mocking glimmer13, as if she were testing you, knowing in advance that you’d never take up her challenge, as if she had already made up her mind that no one in town measured up to her wild standards14. So she’d provoke us with her eyes, and scornfully, also with her eyes, she’d draw away.

6    stuck up：高傲不友善、自以為比他人優越。

7.    當Cerviño開店時，記得當時我認為Old Melchor很快就會比下去。

I remember thinking that……..= I remember (that I) thought that……..

英文片語send something/somebody up 指讓某物/某人的價值增加，這裡send Old Melchor under為相反的意義。up的相反詞不是down嗎？若是用send something down=to make something lose value，問題還不大，但Old Melchor不是物。若是用send somebody down= to send someone to prison，那意思可完全弄錯了。

8.   crew cut= a very short hair style for men 男士短髮型

crewcutting competition 理平頭比賽

9.   為什麼會灑些蔬菜萃取物或汁在頭皮上？難道是阿根廷理髮時的習慣，就好像我們剪頭髮時會往頭髮先噴一點水。

10. 人們為什麼叫Cerviño的老婆the French Woman(法國女人)，敘事者沒想過要去找出原因，因為他可能會失望地發現法國女人原來出生於Bahía Blanca，或者更糟地是出生在像這裡一樣的小鎮。Whatever the truth管他真相如何。

11. 冬天時，她毛衣裡面竟然沒穿。或者那可能是她的習慣，在理髮店出現時都穿得很少。

12.英文口語that’s it通常用在兩種場合：(1) used to say that something is completely finished or that a situation cannot be changed，例句That's it then. There's nothing more we can do.；(2) used to tell someone that they are doing something correctly，例句Slowly...slowly. Yeah, that's it.

這裡But that wasn’t it 屬第一種用法。法國女人穿得少，在大家面前化妝，但不止於如此，她還有比身軀、比開衩超低的領口，更要人命、更叫人魂不守舍的地方

13. 她的眼神令人勾魂，引人綺思，但又帶著些許嘲笑、戲弄人的味道。

14. 鎮上沒有人達得到她狂野的標準。

All this in front of Cerviño, who seemed to notice nothing, bent in silence over the backs of our necks, clicking his scissors in the air from time to time.

Oh, yes, the French Woman was at first Cerviño’s best publicity15, and in the early months his barbershop was very busy. But I had been mistaken about Melchor16. The old man was no fool, and he gradually started to lure his clients back. He somehow managed to get some porno magazines, which the military17 had forbidden in those days, and later, during the World Cup, he gathered all his savings and bought a color TV, the first one in town. Then he started saying, to whoever would listen, that in Puente Viejo there was one and only one barbershop for men; Cerviño’s was a hairdresser’s for poofs18.

15  起初法國女人的確是Cerviño招攬顧客的最佳招牌。

16.但當時我錯估了Old Melchor。

17. the military是整篇故事的關鍵字，在此更是一個重要的伏筆(foreshadowing)。後頭有提到世界杯足球賽the World Cup，那是在1978年，也是這篇故事發生的時間背景。1930s~1983年間，阿根廷處於右翼軍政府獨裁統治下。這裡提到軍政府嚴禁色情雜誌，就已經在暗示當時的社會背景。

18. poof：婆婆媽媽、娘娘腔、搞同性戀的男子。這是一個非常侮辱人的禁忌用語。

However, my guess is that if many returned to Melchor’s barbershop it was, once again, because of the French Woman; few men can stand being mocked or humiliated for very long by a woman.

As I was saying, the young man stayed on. He set up a tent on the outskirts of town, behind the dunes, not far from the house of Espinosa’s widow. He rarely came to the grocery store; whenever he did, he’d shop for a long haul19, for a fortnight or a month, but every single day he visited the barber’s.

And, since it was hard to believe that he went there only to read the sports pages, people started to pity Cerviño. In the beginning, everyone felt sorry for him. The truth is that it wasn’t difficult to feel sorry for Cerviño: he had the innocent air of a cherub20 and an easy smile, as shy people often do. He was a man of very few words, and at times he appeared to sink into a tortuous and distant world; his eyes would wander into space and he’d stand for a long while, sharpening his razor blade or interminably clicking his scissors, so that you had to cough to bring him back to reality. Once or twice, I surprised him21 in the mirror, staring at the French Woman with a mute, concentrated passion, as if he himself were unable to believe that such a woman was his wife. And that devoted gaze, which held not the shadow of a doubt, filled us with pity.

On the other hand, it was equally easy for us to condemn the French Woman, above all for the town’s married women and for the spinsters in search of husbands, who, from the very start, had made common cause against her fearful necklines22. But many men also felt resentful of the French Woman, especially those who had a reputation as the lady-killers of Puente Viejo, such as Nielsen the Jew—men who weren’t accustomed to being slighted23, much less scorned, by a woman.

19  a long haul：a lengthy period of time. 意思是說一次就買很多天的量。

20.cherub在聖經裡指二級天使(常描繪成生有翅膀的小孩)，引申為天真無邪的孩子。

21.這裡surprise的意思並非讓某人感到驚奇，而是突然不期然地遇見某人，或者不經意地注意到某人如何如何。

整句話的意思：「偶而一兩次，我不經意地從鏡子裡注意到Cerviño用著無言、專注的熱情凝視著法國女人。」

即使是一個平常普通的英文字，也要注意上下文，才不會弄錯意思。

22. 法國女人領口開衩很低，鎮上已婚的婦女或求偶的老處女怕她會勾引她們的男人，大家從一開始就都很有意見。

23.slight只是忽視、怠慢，scorn則是輕蔑、鄙視。slight都已經受不了，更何況scorn。

And, either because the World Cup was over and there was nothing left to talk about or because there was a dearth of scandals24 in town, all conversations led eventually to the goings on25 of the French Woman and her young man. From behind the counter, I’d hear over and over the same comments: what Nielsen had seen one night on the beach (it had been a cold night and yet they had both stripped naked and they must have been on drugs26, because they had done something that Nielsen would not describe, even with no women present); what Espinosa’s widow had said (that from her window she could always hear laughter and moaning coming from the boy’s tent, the unmistakable sound of two bodies rolling around together); what the eldest of the Vidals27 had told us (that right in the barbershop, right there in front of him and of Cerviño . . .). Who knows how much of the gossip was true.

One day, we realized that the boy and the French Woman had disappeared. I mean, the boy didn’t seem to be around anymore, and no one had seen the French Woman, either in the barbershop or on the pathway down by the beach where she liked to go for walks. The first thing we all thought was that they’d run away together, and, maybe because running away always has a romantic ring28 to it, or because the dangerous temptress was now out of reach, the women seemed willing to forgive the French Woman for this. It was obvious that there was something wrong in that marriage, they’d say. Cerviño was too old for her, and also the boy was very handsome. . . . And with secretive giggles they’d confess that maybe they would have done the same.

24  a dearth of scandals缺乏八卦醜聞供作談資話題。

25.the goings on of the French Woman and her young man法國女人跟她那年輕小伙子之間的進展。

26. they must have been on drugs他們一定是有嗑了藥。

27. the eldest of the Vidals：Vidals家的老大。

the後面接某姓氏表示那一家人。

28. ring：a suggestion of a particular quality or an inherent quality or characteristic. 例句：His offer has a suspicious ring.他的提議有點令人起疑。

例句：His explanation has the ring of sincerity.他的說明有種真誠的特質。

這裡running away always has a romantic ring to it 私奔這事向來就有種浪漫的色彩。

One afternoon, when the matter was being discussed yet again, Espinosa’s widow, who happened to be in the grocery store, said in a mysterious voice that in her opinion something far worse had taken place; the boy, as we all knew, had set up his tent near her house, and even though she, like the rest of us, hadn’t seen him for days the tent was still there and it seemed to her very strange—she repeated the words “very strange”—that they would not have taken the tent with them. Someone said that maybe the police should be told, and then the widow muttered that it might also be fitting to keep an eye on Cerviño. I remember becoming angry and yet not knowing how to respond: my rule is never to enter into an argument with a customer. I began by weakly saying that no one should be accused without proof, and that in my opinion it was impossible that Cerviño, that someone like Cerviño . . . But the widow cut in29: it was a well-known fact that shy people, introverted people, can be extremely dangerous when pushed too far30.

We were still going around in circles31 when Cerviño appeared at the door.

There was a deep silence; he must have realized that we were talking about him, because everyone looked down or away. I saw him blush, and, more than ever, he seemed to me like a helpless child who had never tried to grow up. When he gave me his order, I noticed that he had only a few groceries on his list and that he hadn’t asked for yogurt. While he was paying, the widow abruptly asked him about the French Woman. Cerviño blushed once more, but gently now, as if he felt honored by so much solicitude32. He said that his wife had travelled up to the city to look after her father, who was very sick, but that she would be back soon, maybe in a week’s time. While he was speaking, a curious expression, which at first I found hard to parse33, crept over the faces around me: disappointment. And as soon as Cerviño was gone the widow renewed her attack. She, the widow said, had not been taken in by that humbug34; we’d never see the poor woman again. And in a low voice she insisted that there was a murderer on the loose35 in Puente Viejo, and that any one of us could be the next victim.

29  cut in 插嘴進來。

30.when pushed too far原先是when (they were) pushed too far。當他們被逼急了。

31.寡婦強烈質疑一定發生了什麼可怕的事。雜貨店老闆認為如果沒有證據就不應該亂講話，更何況像Cerviño這樣的人不可能….. 寡婦插嘴道這種人被逼急了更為危險。We were still going around in circles他們還在圍著這個話題打轉。

32. 彷彿他覺得承蒙如此關懷，備感榮幸。

33. parse：to make sense of; comprehend弄懂;理解。當Cerviño說他老婆回去照料生病的父親，很快就回來時，敘事者身邊的人臉上一一呈現一種奇怪的表情，敘事者起初很難理解他們為什麼這種表情，那表情就是失望。which at first I found hard to parse修飾a curious expression，disappointment是a curious expression的同位語。

34. take in欺騙。humbug騙子。

35. on the loose 逍遙法外。

A week went by, then a whole month, and the French Woman hadn’t returned. Nor had the boy been seen again. The kids from town started using his tent to play at cowboys and Indians36, and Puente Viejo divided itself into two camps: those who were convinced that Cerviño was a criminal and those of us who believed that the French Woman would come back—and we were becoming fewer and fewer. One could hear people say that Cerviño had slit the boy’s throat with a razor while cutting his hair, and mothers would forbid their children to play in the street outside the barbershop and beg their husbands to go back to Melchor’s. However, and this may seem strange, Cerviño wasn’t bereft of clients: the boys in town would dare one another to go and sit in the doomed barber’s chair and ask for a razor haircut, and it became a sign of virility37 to wear one’s hair brushed upward and sprayed.

When we asked for news of the French Woman, Cerviño would repeat the story about his sick father-in-law, which no longer sounded believable. People stopped greeting him, and we heard that Espinosa’s widow had told the police inspector that Cerviño should be arrested. But the inspector had answered that, until the bodies were found, nothing could be done.

The town started making conjectures about the bodies: some said that Cerviño had buried them under his patio; others that he’d cut them into strips and thrown them into the sea. And gradually, in the townspeople’s imagination, Cerviño grew into an increasingly monstrous being.

In the grocery store, listening to the same talk over and over, I began to feel a superstitious fear, the presentiment that in these endless discussions something awful was being hatched38. In the meantime, Espinosa’s widow seemed to have gone out of her mind. She went about digging holes everywhere, armed with a ridiculous child’s shovel, hollering at the top of her voice39 that she wouldn’t rest until she’d found the bodies.

36. cowboys and Indians 一種非常古老的小孩子遊戲，官兵抓強盜就是從這遊戲演變來的。

37.Cerviño被他們說得像殺人魔一樣恐怖，但奇怪的是他的理髮店還是有顧客，因為鎮上的男孩互激對方誰有膽子去給他理髮，Cerviño剪出來的髮型變成男子漢的標記。

38.在雜貨店裡，敘事者聽著相同的話題不斷重複，他開始感覺到一種迷信的恐懼，他預感在這無盡的討論中，某種可怕的事正在被孵育出來。

39. at the top of her voice 以她最大的音量。

And one day she found them.

It was an afternoon at the beginning of November. The widow came into the store and asked me if I had any shovels, and then, in a loud voice so that everyone would hear, she said that the inspector had sent her in search of shovels and volunteers to dig in the dunes behind the bridge. Next, slowly dropping the words one by one, she said that it was there that she had seen, with her very own eyes, a dog devouring a human hand. A shiver ran down my back40; suddenly it had all become true, and while I was looking for the shovels, and while I locked up the store, I kept on hearing, without quite believing it yet, the horrific conversation: “dog,” “body,” “human hand.”

Proudly, the widow led the march. I trailed behind, carrying the shovels. I looked at the others and saw the usual faces, the people who came to the store to buy pasta and tea. I looked around me and nothing had changed, no sudden gust of wind, no unexpected silence. It was an afternoon like all others, at that useless hour when one wakes up from one’s nap. Below us, the houses stood in an ever-decreasing line41, and the sea itself, in the distance, seemed provincial, unthreatening. For an instant, I thought that I understood my own feelings of incredulity. Because something like this couldn’t be happening here, not in Puente Viejo.

When we reached the dunes, the inspector hadn’t found anything yet. He was digging bare-chested42, and his shovel rose and fell unhampered. He gestured vaguely around him, and I handed out the shovels and sank mine into the spot that looked safest43. For a while, the only sound was the dry thud of metal hitting sand. I was starting to lose my fear of the shovel and to think that maybe the widow had made a mistake, that maybe what she had told us wasn’t true, when we heard a furious barking. It was the dog that the widow had seen earlier, a poor anemic creature running desperately around us in circles. The inspector tried to shoo it away44 by throwing bricks at it, but the dog came back again and again, and at a certain point45 seemed almost to jump up at the inspector’s throat.

40. A shiver ran down my back表示我突然感到一種莫名的害怕，類似中文說法：我感到頭皮一陣發麻。相同的表達方式有：A shiver ran through me; It gave me the shivers; It sent shivers down my spine.

41.在我們底下，一整排屋舍，屋舍數量持續在減少。屋舍數量持續減少代表居民持續遷出，可能因為小鎮生活太無聊太八卦，也可能因為外頭有更好的機會。

42. bare-chested形容He。檢察官裸著上半身在挖掘。

43. 敘事者將他的鏟子往看起來最安全的地方挖下去。什麼是看起來最安全的地方？也就是敘事者認為看起來最不可能有埋藏屍體的地方，可能是因為他膽子小，但主要是因為他實在不願意去相信、接受法國女人和年輕小夥子遭受殺害。

44. shoo it away發出噓聲驅趕。

45.at a certain point中point的意思：a specific moment in time。那隻狗驅之不去，不斷跑回來，在某一刻好像幾乎要跳起來咬檢察官的喉嚨。

And then we realized that this was indeed the place. The inspector started to dig once again, faster and faster; his frenzy was contagious, the shovels moved in unison46, and suddenly the inspector shouted that he’d hit something. He dug a little deeper and the first body appeared.

The others barely glanced at it and went back to their shovels, almost enthusiastically, searching for the French Woman, but I went up to the body and forced myself to look at it closely. Between its sand-filled eyes was a black hole. It wasn’t the boy.

I turned around, to warn the inspector, and it was like stepping into a nightmare: everyone was digging up bodies. It was as if the bodies were sprouting from the earth47 Every time a shovel dug in, a head would roll out or a mutilated torso would appear. Wherever you looked, there were dead bodies and more dead bodies, and heads and more heads.

The horror made me wander from one place to another; I wasn’t able to think, I wasn’t able to understand, until I saw a back riddled with bullets48 and, farther away, a blindfolded head. Then I realized what it was. I looked at the inspector and saw that he, too, had understood, and he ordered us to stay where we were, not to move, and went back into town to get instructions.

Of the time that went by until he came back49, I remember only the incessant barking of the dog, the smell of death, and the figure of the widow prodding with her child’s shovel among the corpses, shouting at us to carry on, because the French Woman had not yet been found. When the inspector returned, he was straight-backed and solemn, like someone ready to give orders.

He stood in front of us and told us to bury the bodies again, just as we had found them. We all went back to our shovels, no one daring to say a word.

As the sand covered the bodies, I asked myself whether the boy might not be here, too. The dog was barking and jumping up and down, as if crazy. Then we saw the inspector, one knee on the ground and his gun in his hand. He fired a single shot. The dog fell down dead. Then he took two steps, still holding the gun, and kicked the dog’s body away, for us to bury it as well. Before heading back to town, he ordered us not to speak to anyone about what we had seen, and jotted down, one by one, the names of all who had been there.

The French Woman returned a few days later: her father had completely recovered. We never mentioned the boy again. The tent was stolen as soon as the holiday season started. ♦50

46. in unison在同一個時間做同一件事。

47. 彷彿屍體是從土裡發芽長出來，類似雨後春筍的景觀。

48. riddle(vt.)：刺穿成許多小孔。 a back riddled with bullets彈孔密佈的背部。

49.在檢察官回來之前的那段時間。

50.法國女人幾天後回來了，她爸爸已完全康復，我們不再提及那年輕小夥子，開始放假了，小夥子留下的帳篷也被偷走了。這樣的結尾代表什麼意涵？

【淺嚐賞味】

這篇故事的情節從鋪陳、推展、懸宕，層層堆疊，浪翻瀾起。到高潮處更是掀天覆地將故事的涵義從原先凡俗的格局，一舉超拔到更浩渺、深遠的層次與境地。作者對於情節營造，可謂箇中翹楚。

故事的精彩當起自法國女人登場。她不戴奶罩，毛衣內什麼也沒穿，當眾化妝，領口開衩超低，還常瞪著人直視。更要命的是她的眼神，勾人魂，引人綺思，卻又充滿輕蔑與嘲慠。鎮上的登徒子垂涎不可得，對她恨得牙癢癢的，鎮上的女人對她忌妒疑猜，猛嚼舌根。有了這號人物就像在火爐旁堆著炸藥，故事早已暗潮洶湧，讀者專注地等著看好戲。

這時來了一位要去南方露營的年輕人，在理髮店見了法國女人一眼之後，不走了，每天失魂落魄地往理髮店報到。適巧世界杯足球賽剛過，人們閒著慌，於是各種驚世駭俗、傷風敗德的八卦四起。寒夜裡沙灘上有人看到他們兩人脫光衣服嗑了藥，幹了羞以告人的事；有人聽到從年輕人的帳篷裡傳來笑聲與呻吟，還有兩個肉體翻滾的聲音；有人見證甚至在理髮店裡當著她老公Cerviño的面，他們如何又如何。在此，故事來了個小小的變化：法國女人與年輕人同時失蹤了。

大家起初都以為他們兩人私奔了，Espinosa的寡婦獨排眾議，認為事情不單純。Cerviño剛好來到雜貨店，他解釋說：法國女人的父親生病了，她回鄉照料父親。敘事者注意到身邊人們臉上浮現一種奇怪的表情：失望。當下敘事者不理解為何聽了合理的說明會露出失望的表情，聰明的讀者從這句話應當已讀出作者要表達的意思。Cerviño一離開，寡婦立即駁斥，以低沉的聲音說：有個殺人犯逍遙法外，我們都可能是下一個受害者。人們繪聲繪影將Cerviño描述成殺人魔，婦女嚴禁其丈夫、小孩到他的理髮店。鎮上的男孩卻偏偏要去讓Cerviño理髮，表示有膽量、夠男子漢。

接下來寡婦賣命、瘋狂的演出，更是將鬧劇的荒謬性表達得淋漓盡致。她拿著小孩子玩具用的鏟子，到處挖洞。And one day she found them. 這麼短的一個段落將讀者的心懸在高空中：真的還是假的？這時，鎮上所有的人都拿起鏟子，加入寡婦的鬧劇演出，檢察官更是責無旁貸，身先士卒。

第一個屍體出現，像個惡夢，每一個人都挖到屍體，屍體彷彿從土壤中發芽長了出來。故事高潮猶若「亂石崩雲，驚濤裂岸」，劇情的「捲起千堆雪」應當是在檢察官請示上級後，命令大家將屍體埋回去，一槍將那條狗斃了，下禁口令，而且還將在場所有人的名字都抄錄下來。

故事的結尾：法國女人幾天後回來，她爸爸已完全康復，無人再提及那年輕人，他留下的帳篷被偷走，開始放假了。此結尾傳達濃厚的“黑色幽默” 思想情緒。人們對於黑暗現實感到不滿，但是卻沒有勇氣和力量去反抗，通過諷刺嘲笑來發洩自己的痛苦與絕望的情緒。黑色幽默中含有陰沉的情緒，在絕望中又能發出大笑。

故事背景說明：這故事應當發生在1978年左右，阿根廷處於右翼軍政府獨裁統治。1976 ~ 1983年間，阿根廷實施白色恐怖（the Dirty War 西語：Guerra Sucia），成千上萬的左翼活動分子與民兵，包括工會成員、學生、記者、馬克斯思想分子甚至同情左翼的人皆無故失蹤、遭殺害，根據不同來源估計罹難人數約9,089 ~ 30,000。老一輩的台灣人若讀到這篇故事，應有更深切的感受。

1982年諾貝爾文學獎得主Gabriel Garcia Marquez的短篇故事One of These Days，亦在嘲諷、控訴拉丁美洲軍事獨裁統治，筆調較輕淡，但同樣辛辣。

Traveler-Levin