Translation Tuesday: Albina and the Dog-Men by Alejandro Jodorowsky – extract

Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky has a new novel coming out in English today, a supernatural love-and-horror story full of the dark magic that characterises his work. Read an extract here, in partnership with Asymptote

By Alejandro Jodorowsky and Alfred MacAdam for Translation Tuesdays by Asymptote, part of the Guardian Books Network

Like all Chileans, Crabby spoke in a singsong way, her voice vibrating in her nose. She laughed at everything, even celebrity deaths, and made cruel jokes. She drank red wine until she collapsed in snores, only to wake up barefoot because someone had stolen her shoes. She ate empanadas and sea urchin tongues in green sauce seasoned with fresh, extra-hot chili. Whenever the cops beat a “political agitator” to death, she turned a blind eye, pretending not to notice. Actually she wasn’t Chilean but Lithuanian.

She landed in Valparaíso when she was two, pulled along by her mother, a fat redhead who spoke only Yiddish, and her father a tall (almost seven-foot), skinny fellow as light on his feet as a bird. His profession was the most pedestrian imaginable: callus remover. Using prayer, he made the calluses on people’s feet fall off. Since his name was Abraham and his wife’s name was Sarah, he dreamed—for too many years—of having a son he could name Isaac, which in Hebrew means, “he laughs.” After anguished efforts, ten months of gestation, anemia, forceps, a cesarean, a strangling umbilical chord, Sarah finally gave birth to a daughter. Abraham stubbornly insisted on naming her Isaac, but very early in life, even before she began to walk, the girl would burst into an angry fit of wailing the instant she heard that persistent “Isaac.” Only a teaspoon of honey would calm her down.

Related: Alejandro Jodorowsky: 'I am not mad. I am trying to heal my soul'

I am a wound awaiting the gaze of another in order to heal. A frog who will never turn into a princess.

Related: Lennon, Manson and me: the psychedelic cinema of Alejandro Jodorowsky

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