Translated from Spanish by Ellen Jones
Published by Charco Press, 2019, 97 pages. Original version published in 2017.

A man put in charge of a trout farm lets his emotions get the better of him; a farmer stands up to armed men; and a man’s friend calls in his debt, forcing the man to sell his farm. The seven stories in this collection have a common thread—Don Henrik, a man trying to earn a living in the Guatemalan countryside.

The countryside is beautiful and peaceful, but the threat of violence is never far away.

Take the title story, for example. It is narrated by the man whom Don Henrik has put in charge of his trout farm, set up on top of the mountain. Although trout are delicate creatures that cannot survive in warm climates, they can also be savage. The narrator watches the trout swim, “counter clockwise, all together like a big happy family”. But the moment a single trout rises to the surface and goes belly up, the water starts to churn, and the surface fills “with the metallic flashes of a knife fight. A minute later the big family was once again swimming counter clockwise. There was no sign of the trout that went belly up.”

On the farm, things seem fine on the surface, but there is an undercurrent of unease. Juancho, the narrator’s cousin, works at the farm, having taken the job because he is on the run. The narrator sees him as a rival for his wife’s affections (it is never really clear why, but jealousy does not have to have a reason). The two men do not get along. But when Juancho implies that he is aware of the narrator’s affair with a woman in the village, things start to unravel.

The language that Rodrigo Fuentes uses is spare—he has been compared to Hemingway—something that Ellen Jones captures in her translation.

In the last story, narrated by the son of Don Henrik’s lover, Don Henrik is facing financial ruin. The narrator says that his mother realizes that Henrik is “on the edge of an abyss, could see the shame brought on by every trip to the bank, every return from the farm.” It is made worse by his business partner suing him for missing his loan repayments. “He didn’t understand how someone could play him like that after a loan given in friendship. Talk about kicking a man when he’s down, said my mother and then fell silent. But at least, she continued, looking into the bottom of her cup, in moments like these, the wolves take off their sheep’s clothing.”    

Although the stories seem simple, they have layers and pack a punch. Some of them end on a cliff hanger, leaving the reader to imagine what happens next. Although the narrators change, each story seems to reveal a little more about Don Henrik.

I enjoyed this collection of unusual stories and look forward to more from Fuentes.