Beyond Dimensions

por Iván Medina

Duerme, duerme, niño lindo,

que viene el Coco…

Anton Chéjov

Entré entusiasmado para gozar de mi primer espectáculo circense como todos aquellos chavalos sonrientes y bulliciosos. Fascinado ante aquella novedad de exquisita luz, tenue y multicolor, entre animales salvajes y valientes trapecistas dando maromas mortales por los aires al verse seducidos ante la comparsa de aplausos. Impetuoso. Mis ojos especulativos se clavaron en el payaso cuando el telón principal se corrió tan despacio como sólo él sabe hacerlo. Quedé estupefacto, sin aliento, con el semblante completamente pálido, mis padres preocupados trataron de darme ánimo al explicarme las funciones graciosas e inofensivas de aquel artista. No quería escuchar o quizá simplemente no escuchaba. Al incrementarse mi conmoción, al sentir próxima la presencia de ese bufón con risa mezquina, comencé a tiritar hasta quebrar la frágil vara del algodón de azúcar que sostenía con firmeza por mi mano izquierda, al saber mis dedos libres, ceñí con fuerza la suave muñeca de mamá y me desvanecí sobre la butaca. Al llegar a casa, sin resistencia física, volví a aquel cuarto tapizado con cientos de rostros maléficos de arlequines desquiciados, a la sala obscura de mis pesadillas pueriles, a la habitación donde cada noche de función se me hacía morir con el preámbulo del tétrico rechinar de las bisagras del closet, un crujir cambiante toda vez que las pequeñas puertas opacas ceden hasta encontrarse abiertas, y el guiñol, salido de la penumbra avanza con una delicada morbosidad hacia mi pequeña cama infantil, grávida de suplicios, como otras tantas veces lo ha hecho.

The Coco

By Iván Median Castro
Translated by Keith Grimes

Sleep, sleep, cute boy,
For the Coco is coming…
Anton Chekhov

I stepped across the threshold, fiercely enthusiastic for my first circus, eager to lose myself among the ranks of those smiling, boisterous children. I stood fascinated by the novelty of soft, multicolored, exquisite lights, surrounded by wild animals and brave trapeze artists performing mortal somersaults through the air, beguiled by the chorus of applause.
Impetuous. My searching eyes locked onto the clown the moment the main curtain parted, drawing back as slowly as only he knew how to do. I froze, stupefied and breathless, my face turning utterly pale. Worried, my parents tried to comfort me, explaining the harmless, funny antics of the performer. I did not want to listen—or perhaps, I simply didn’t listen. As my panic surged, feeling the looming presence of that jester with his malicious laugh, I began to tremble, shaking until the fragile stick of the cotton candy I held tightly in my left hand snapped. Sensing my fingers suddenly free, I gripped my mother’s soft wrist with all my might, and vanished into my theater seat.
Upon arriving home, stripped of all physical resistance, I returned to my room papered with hundreds of malicious faces of unhinged harlequins. I returned to the dark theater of my childish nightmares; to the room where, on every night of a performance, I was made to die by the prelude of the closet hinges’ gloomy screech—a shifting creak that echoes every time the small, opaque doors yield until they swing wide open. And a puppet, emerging from the shadows, advances with a delicate morbidity toward my small, childhood bed—a bed heavy with torments, just as it has done so many times before.

Translators notes:

El Coco, or El Cuco is a traditional mythical
boogeyman or monster in Spain, Portugal, and Latin America.
Parents would traditionally sing lullabies to their children
containing the phrase, “go to sleep or El Coco will come and eat you.”

The Chekhov quote is the opening line of Chekhov’s classic short story,
Sleepy, written in 1888, translated from Russian to Spanish, to English.