Instead, she finds in her friend’s brother a continuity with her childhood, a sexual relationship that started when she was thirteen and years later is still with her, permeated with the memories of his hamsters who eat their young. In Crías the narrator is on a journey to the past, to the home she left long ago, which, is often said to be impossible. In Nam the teenage narrator finds a growing same sex attraction to her American classmate, an unrequited attraction that is never fulfilled as the mysterious family reveals its dark secrets. The way Ampuero explores awakening sexuality within the the context of family.
In many ways these three were the most shocking. The first grouping might be said to be the unmoored young consisting of Nam, Crías (Offspring), and Persianas (Blinds). I’m not sure if it’s intentional, but the stories fall into groups. Yet the narrator’s solution to her problem, one that both takes her dignity and yet leaves it intact, reveals a world where the powerful are one step away from what horrifies them most. These two elements are as clear as it gets in Subasta, and the results are horrifying. It also surfaces two themes that run through out the collection: the extreme disparities in wealth in the unnamed country (Ampuero is from Ecuador, but never locates her stories in a specific place) and the differing treatment of men and women. It is a terrifying story, one that increases in tension and terror as it builds. In the second part she is kidnapped in a taxi and taken to an auction where she along with other victims are auctioned off so they can be ransomed, or in the case of young women, sexual slavery.
She had the duty of cleaning up after the fights, getting covered in the blood and gore of the fight, becoming the brunt of jokes for her filth. In the first the narrator tells of her girlhood spent helping her father at the cockfights he ran. The first story of the collection, Subasta (Auction), is a good reference point for the themes Ampuero explores. It is a surprising mix that makes a compelling read, one that is hard to put down, and leaves you wanting more, given its scant 114 pages (one of my few complaints, even though concision should usually be commended). Yet there is also a well honed subtlety and an unsaid that create a wide texture of moods and motifs, and reveal an author who knows how to construct a short story. The stories are taught and powerful, unafraid of the violence and inhumanity that comes from a pelea de gallos. It is an apt metaphor for María Fernanda Ampuero’s excellent first collection of short stories, where characters, often at the margins, find themselves trapped in often horrifying situations they did not expect. A pelea de gallos is a cockfight, the bloody and senseless fight between two roosters all for the enjoyment of rabid men.
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