Elena Garro

 Brief Biography 

Elena Garro was born in Mexico in 1920. She spent her childhood in Mexico City, which influenced the settings of many of her stories, namely "The Day We Were Dogs," featured later on this blog. While in Mexico City, she studied theater and literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Later on in life, she met writer Octavio Paz, married him, and began a career of her own in journalism and fiction writing. She is the author of many short stories, which often explore the struggles of being poor and oppressed through a haunted and sometimes violent lens. She focuses on the concepts of time and memory, often exploring these themes through the perspectives of children. 

Elena Garro is often described as the initiator of the Magical Realism movement, a literary theme commonly found in Latin American literature. Her contribution to World Literature should not be overlooked. She is considered one of the most important writers of the Mexican literary world. With literature comes an addition and a reflection of the cultural history of a place--Garro is steeped in that world, and her prolific career provides a hefty collection that makes her a vanguard of Mexican culture on the world's stage. Her themes include political movements in Mexico, the patriarchal influence on women in Mexican society, and the oppression of minorities throughout. She was an extremely vocal writer, constantly sharing her opinions to the public and within various literary circles (of which Borges was a part as well)--creating a mosaic of experience that is a worthy addition to the World Literature canon.

One of her more well-known and surreal stories, "The Day We Were Dogs," is included here. The story is preceded by my analysis of themes and perspectives within the story.  

The Day We Were Dogs, by Elena Garro. Translated by Tona Wilson

The day we were dogs was not just any day, even though it began the way every day begins. We awoke at six in the morning and knew that it was a day with two days inside it. Lying on her back, Eva opened her eyes and, without changing her position, looked at one day and looked at the other. I had opened mine just a few moments before and, so as not to see the vastness of the empty house, I was looking at her. Why had we not gone to Mexico City? I still do not know that. We asked to stay and no one opposed our wish. The day before, the hall was filled with suitcases: everyone was fleeing the heat of August. Very early the suitcases left in a horse-drawn cart; on the table remained the half-finished cups of coffee and the oatmeal sticking to the bowls. Advice and suggestions rained down upon the tiles in the hall. Eva and I watched them disdainfully. We were the mistresses of the patios, the gardens, the rooms. When we took possession of the house, a great weight fell upon us. What could we do with the archways, the windows, the doors, and the furniture? The day turned solid, the violet sky clouded over with dark papers, and fear settled into the pillars and the plants. In silence we wandered about the house and watched our hair become rags. We had nothing to do, no one to ask what to do. In the kitchen, the servants clustered around the hearth, to eat and doze. The beds were not made; no one watered the ferns or took the dirty cups off the dining room table. At dusk, the songs of the servants filled with crimes and sorrows, and the house sank into that day, like a rock in a deep gorge.

We awoke determined not to repeat the preceding day. The new day shone double and intact. Eva looked at the two parallel days that glowed like two lines drawn in the water. Then she studied the wall, where Christ was in his white tunic. Then she turned her eyes to the other picture, which showed the image of Buddha wrapped in his orange tunic, pensive, in the middle of a yellowish landscape. Between the two pictures that guarded her bed, Eva had hung a clipping from a newspaper, with a photograph in which a lady in a beret was sailing on a yacht. "Madame Kroupuskaia on the Neva" said the caption.

"I like Russians," said Eva, and she clapped her hands to call the servants. No one responded to her call. We looked at each other without surprise. Eva clapped her hands in one of the days and her claps did not reach the day of the kitchen.

"Let's sniff around," she said to me.

And she jumped up on my bed to look at me up close. Her blonde hair covered her forehead. From my bed she jumped to the floor, put a finger to her lips and penetrated cautiously into the day that advanced parallel to the other. I followed her. No one. The day was alone, and it was as frightening as the other. The quiet trees, the rounded sky, green like a gentle meadow, without anyone either, without a horse, without a rider, abandoned. From the well rose the heat of August, which had caused the flight to Mexico City. Stretched out next to a tree was Toni. They had already chained him up. He looked at us attentively and we saw that he was in our day.

"Toni's good," said Eva and patted his open mouth.

Then she lay down next to him and I lay down on his other side.

"Did you already have breakfast, Toni?"

Toni didn't answer, only looked at us sadly. Eva got up and disappeared among the plants. She returned running and threw herself down next to Toni.

"I just told them to cook for three dogs and no people."

I didn't ask anything. Next to Toni the house had lost its weight. Two ants were walking on the ground of the day;, an earthworm peeked out of a little hole, I touched it with my fingertip and it became a red ring. There were bits of leaves, little pieces of branches, tiny pebbles, and the black earth smelled of magnolia water. The other day was off to one side. Toni, Eva, and I watched without fear its gigantic towers and stationary winds, purple and mulberry colored.

"You, what's your name going to be? Look for your dog name, I'm looking for mine."

"I'm a dog?"

"Yes, we're dogs."

I accepted that and moved closer to Toni, who moved his head, disgusted. I remembered that he was not going to go to heaven; I would have the same fate. "Animals don't go to heaven." Our Lord Jesus Christ had not put a place for dogs in heaven. Nor had Lord Buddha put a place in Nirvana for dogs. In the house it was very important to be good so we could go to heaven. We couldn't hoard things, nor kill animals; we were vegetarians and on Sundays we threw Sunday from the balcony so someone could pick it up and we would learn not to keep anything. We lived up to date. The people of the town spied around the balconies of the house. "They're Spaniards," they said and looked at us askance. We didn't know that we weren't from there because we were going to heaven, either to one or the other: the white and blue or the orange and yellow one. Now there wouldn't be a place for the three of us in either of them. The alchemists, the Greeks, the anarchists, the romantics, the occultists, the Franciscans, and the Romans occupied the library shelves and dinner table conversations. The Evangelists, the Vedas and the poets had a place apart. For the dogs there was nowhere but the foot of a tree. And afterwards? Afterwards we would be left lying on the ground.

"I just found my name."

"Already?" Eva sat up, curious.

"Yes: Christ."

Eva looked at me enviously.

"Christ? That's a good dog name."

Eva rested her head on her forepaws and closed her eyes.

"I found mine too," she said, sitting up suddenly.

"What?"

"Buddha!"

"That's a very good dog name."

And Buddha lay down next to Toni and began to growl with pleasure.

No one came to visit the day of Toni, Christ, and Buddha. The house was far away, within its other day. The chimes of the church clock told nothing. The ground began to get very hot: the worms crawled into their holes, the black beetles looked for the moist places underneath the stones, the ants cut acacia leaves, which they used as green sunshades. Where the dogs were, there was thirst. Buddha barked impatiently, asking for water, Toni imitated him and a moment later Christ joined in the barking. On a distant path appeared the feet of Rutilio, in huaraches. He brought three bowls of water. Indifferently he put a bowl in front of Toni, looked at Christ and Buddha, and placed a bowl of water near each of their snouts. Rutilio patted the heads of the dogs, and they gratefully wagged their tails. It was difficult to drink water with your tongue. Later the old servant brought food in a pot and served it in a big crock. The dogs' rice had bones and meat. Christ and Buddha looked at each other, astonished: weren't dogs vegetarians? Toni lifted his upper lip, growled fiercely through his white fangs, and quickly grabbed the chunks of meat. Christ and Buddha put their snouts in the crock and ate the rice moistened like gruel. Toni finished and drowsily watched his companions, who lapped up the rice. Later, they too rested on their forefeet. The sun beat down, the earth burned, and the dogs' food was heavy as a bag of rocks. They stayed sleeping in their day, separated from the day of the house. They were awakened by a blast that came from the other day. A long silence followed. Alert, they listened to the other afternoon. Another explosion, and the three dogs began running in the direction of the sound. Toni could not join in the race, because his chain stopped him close to the tree. Christ and Buddha jumped over the bushes in the direction of the gate.

"Where are you going, you wretched little brats?" Rutilio yelled at them, from the other day.

The dogs got to the gate; it was hard for them to open the door; the bolts were very high up. Finally they went out into the street, illuminated by the four o'clock sun. The street shone splendidly, like a fixed image. The stones glittered in the dust. There was nobody. Nobody but the two men bathed in blood, embraced in their struggle. Buddha sat down on the edge of the sidewalk and looked at them with eyes wide open. Christ settled down right next to Buddha and also looked at them with amazement. The men growled in the other day, "You'll see" . . . "Ayay! Son of a bitch!" Their smothered voices came from very far away. One restrained the hand of the one that held the pistol and with his free hand tattooed the other's chest with his knife. He was clasped to the body of the other, and, as though he hadn't enough strength, he slipped to the ground in the embrace. The man with the pistol stood firm in the splendid afternoon. His shirt and his white pants were soaked in blood. With a movement he freed his imprisoned hand and rested the pistol against the center of the forehead of his kneeling enemy. A dry sound divided the other afternoon in two, and opened a little hole in the forehead of the kneeling man. The man fell on his back and looked fixedly at the sky.

"Bastard!" yelled the man standing on the stones, while his legs continued to rain blood. Then he too raised his eyes to look at the same sky, and at the end of a few moments turned them on the dogs, who a couple of yards away, sitting on the edge of the sidewalk, stared at him openmouthed.

Everything was still. The other afternoon got so high that down below the street was outside of it. In the distance appeared several men with rifles. They were, like all the men, dressed in white, with palm sombreros on their heads. They walked slowly. The tread of their huaraches sounded from very far away. In the street there were no trees to deaden the sound of the footsteps; only white walls, against which echoed, closer and closer, the steps, like the roll of the drums on a day of fiesta. The roar stopped suddenly when they got to the wounded man.

"You killed him?"

"I sure did, ask the girls."

The men looked at the dogs.

"Did you see it?"

"Woof! Woof!" replied Buddha.

"Woof! Woof!" responded Christ.

"O.K. Take him away."

They took away the man and there remained no trace of him but the blood on the paving stones. He was writing his fate; the dogs read his bloody destiny and turned to look again at the dead man.

A time passed, the door of the house remained open, and the dogs, absorbed, sitting on the edge of the sidewalk, continued to look at the dead man. A fly appeared at the wound on his forehead, then cleaned its feet and moved to his hair. After an instant it returned to the forehead, looked at the wound, and again cleaned its feet. When the fly returned to the wound, a woman arrived and threw herself upon the dead man. But to him neither the fly nor the woman mattered. Unmoved, he continued to look at the sky. Other people came and bent down to see his eyes. It began to get dark and Buddha and Christ remained there, neither moving nor barking. They looked like two stray dogs and nobody paid any attention to them.

"Eva! Leli!" someone was calling from very high up. The dogs jumped, startled.

"Just wait till your parents get home! Just you wait and see!" Rutilio led them into the house. He placed a chair in the hallway, very close to the wall, and sat down to look at the dogs, who, lying at his feet, were watching him attentively. Candelaria brought a lighted paraffin lamp, and, strutting, returned to the kitchen. In a little while the songs flooded the house with mourning.

"It's your fault I can't go sing! . . . Wicked brats!" griped Rutilio.

Christ and Buddha listened to him from the other day. Rutilio, his chair, the lamp and the dead man, they were all in the parallel day, separated from the other day by an invisible line.

"Just wait and see, the witches will come and suck your blood. They say they love the blood of blondes. I'm going to tell Candelaria to leave the coals burning, so they can warm their calves. From the hearth they'll go straight up to your bed to enjoy themselves. It's what you deserve, for being wretches."

The hearth with the burning coals, Candelaria, Rutilio, the songs, and the witches, passed before the dogs' eyes like figures projected in another time. Rutilio's words circled through the hall without end and didn't touch them. On the floor of the day of the dogs, there were fat little bugs that were going to sleep. The sleepiness of the bugs was contagious and Christ and Buddha, curled up over their front paws, nodded.

"Supper time!"

They sat them down on the kitchen floor, in the circle of servants who were drinking alcohol and gave them a plate of beans with sausage. The dogs were falling asleep. Until yesterday they had still had oatmeal with milk for supper and the sausage made them feel queasy.

"Put them to bed, they're acting drunk!"

They put them both in the same bed, put out the lamp and left. The dogs slept in the other day, at the foot of the tree, with the chain around their necks, near the ants with their green sunshades and the red earthworms. After a short time they woke up, startled. The parallel day was there, sitting in the middle of the room. The walls were breathing burning coals; through the cracks the witches lurked, watching the blue veins of their temples. Everything was very dark. In one of the beds lay the dead man with his forehead open; at his side the man with the tattooed chest gushed blood. Very far away, at the back of the garden, slept the servants; Mexico City, with their parents and their brothers, who knew where that was? On the other hand, the other day was there, very close to them, without a bark, with its immobile dead men, in the immobile afternoon, with the enormous fly peering into the enormous wound and cleaning its feet. In sleep, without realizing it, we passed from one day to the other, and lost the day we were dogs. "Don't be afraid, we're dogs . . ."

But Eva knew that it was no longer true. We had discovered that the heaven of men was not the same as the heaven of dogs. The dogs did not share the crime with us.

Analysis 

One interpretation of this story is that it is about children who seek a coping mechanism for the harsh, neglectful world of adults by role-playing as dogs. The style is surreal, and describes a world in which the imagination of children dictates the reality of the world around them. 

One of the first sentences dictates the tone: “We awoke at six in the morning and knew that it was a day with two days inside it” (206). Starting off with a narration in the first person, we are experiencing the world as the narrator experiences it. Seeing as Garro was writing during the modernist literary era, the declaration that the children know that day has "two days inside it" is a subversive method of narration, splitting the possible narrative into two separate paths. There is an immediate inundation into the surreal worldview these narrators have, and an uncertainty presides regarding whether or not the world is actually as surreal as they are describing it, or their imagination is just quite unique.

The narrator feels ownership over the house, describing its empty archways, furniture, and various architecture as their very own. This emptiness throughout the vast house and the children's sense of ownership removes them from the world of adults (or the rest of the world), secluding them in a quiet, peaceful, innocent world. Thus we have the two parallel days: The day (or world) of the innocent, solitary children, and the day (or world) of the sophisticated, corrupted world of adults. Another example of this: “[Eva] clapped her hands to call the servants. No one responded to her call. We looked at each other without surprise. Eva clapped her hands in one of the days and her claps did not reach the day of the kitchen” (207) .

Seeing as they have no adults to dictate how they live their lives, but also no adults to give them order and frame their worldview, whatever they imagine within the narrative does not "seem," but "is." In other words, their imaginative interpretations of the world are real. There is an example of this in the language describing the clouds overcasting the sky: “The day turned solid, the violet sky clouded over with dark papers” (207).

An interesting turn in the story comes when the children seamlessly transition into dogs, without any introduction to the event. This is a solid mark of the magical realist style, characterized by fantastical events happening without any justification or explanation. This aligns with Garro's innovative and modernist style, adding a little piece to the larger canonical puzzle.

The children's metamorphosis into dogs can be interpreted as a coping mechanism as well as a way to explore the world in their own way, outside of the influence of, in the case of this story, violent adults.

Throughout the story they explore the world around them with a removed point of view, interpreting events not as humans but as dogs. They do not fully understand or experience anything going on around them, and often the language regarding a violent event is innocent and pared down. The most striking example of this is when the two dogs (who used to be children) witness a murder:

"With a movement he freed his imprisoned hand and rested the pistol against the center of the forehead of his kneeling enemy. A dry sound divided the other afternoon in two, and opened a little forehead of the kneeling man. The man fell on his back and looked fixedly at the sky" (210).

The children, or dogs, have no real idea of what is going on. They seem to know subconsciously that they are witnessing something violent or traumatic, as the language indicates violence even through the hazy film of their innocence. The emphasis of "the other afternoon" here solidifies their detachment from the world around them, a way to cope with the violence they witness. Even when he falls on his back, most certainly dead, the man is described as looking at the sky. Their transformation is a way to handle these events that compromise their innocence. If they are not human, they will not be implicated.

However, at the end of the story, the children are unable to transform into dogs again. This symbolizes their loss of innocence, and their inability to live in a separate world (or day) from the rest.