Ana María Shua - Octavio the Invader

Let me begin the review by stating the exceedingly obvious - we don't know what goes on in the minds of infants. Maybe there's nothing in there but rudimentary sensory perception and a strong sense for their mother, but maybe there's more going on than we think. They seem to pick up on our emotions, but even these intuitive reactions come across as something fragile and ill-focused, a stab in the dark based on Love Hate Anger Happiness. Earlier today, around lunch-time, a colleague of mine brought her baby to work. We gathered around, made appreciative noises, picked her up and petted her, and the baby responded by crying, then gurgling, and then she fell back asleep. All very ordinary, but it was impossible to know whether she approved, disapproved, or was simply oblivious to our existence as discrete individuals. What did she think of us? Probably nothing.

Or perhaps she was part of the millennial invasion, a keen soldier in the plot to overthrow humanity by using our most treasured possessions as weapons and spies – our children.

Perhaps not. But, this is the conceit of Ana María Shua's Octavio the Invader. As a premise, it's silly, implausible, and warrants a smirk to read about – but it's also brilliantly executed, and works far better than I had expected. In a nutshell, Octavio is an alien, a mind impregnated into the body of a human child. He has come from somewhere and has some mission, but these thoughts are vague – and become increasingly hazy as time marches on.

Once more he felt himself transported. Something or someone was touching him and moving parts of his body. The light hurt him. Suddenly they lifted him up in the air and deposited him on top of a warm, soft body. He stopped howling: from within that warmth there came—now muted—the regular, hypnotic rhythm he had listened to during his anticipatory convalescence, during the months following the transmigration. His terror receded. He began to feel inexplicably safe, at peace. There he was at last, part of the vanguard of this new invasion attempt, an attempt that, this time, would not fail. He should have felt proud, but fatigue struggled against his pride, finally conquering it: on the breast of the Earth-woman who thought she was his mother, for the very first time in this world, he fell sound asleep.

This, of course, is birth. He had done it!

Octavio was warned beforehand that the attachment to the physical would be his undoing, so at first he rejects his “mother”, screaming and complaining. He notes, with a cool and clear head, that his screaming causes a certain reaction amongst the women – his “mother” and the nurses – which he could use to his advantage. And so he does, and then – the nipple. He is fed. It's horrible! Or is it?

When the painful sensation coming from inside his body became unbearable, Octavio began to scream again. He was lifted into the air and taken to that warm, squishy place from which, despite his instructions, he was loath to be separated. And when something stroked his cheek, he couldn’t help turning his head and parting his lips. Desperately, frantically, he sought relief from the burning feeling that ripped through his insides. Before he realized what he was doing, Octavio was eagerly sucking on his “mother’s” nipple. Yielding, he understood that his entire will could not wrest him from that fount of relief, the very body of a human being. The words “sweet” and “warm,” which, in referring to the organs that organized experience in his own world, had been no more than symbolic terms, were now filled with tangible meaning. Trying to convince himself that this small concession would in no way affect his mission, Octavio once more fell asleep.

Octavio slowly learns what works and what doesn't, and soon a strange, somewhat cold and (mostly) uninterested man enters the scene. The father, of course. Also, there is a young boy, identified by Octavio as an alien sent a few years back, but now a Traitor. Part of Octavio's mission, if he is able to achieve it, is to assassinate the Traitor. But the Traitor seems to have ideas for him, too, wildly rocking Octavio in his crib until his “mother” rescues him, calms him, protects him. Perhaps there's a use for the woman after all?

In effect, the conceit of the alien invasion allows Ana María Shua to explore the root concepts of childhood, motherhood, and the bond between siblings. Octavio is learning the metaphors, customs, and social norms of life much the way we all do, but thanks to his “alien intelligence”, he is able to approach the first months of his life with clarity. His comments are the comments we would make, which of course makes them, one suspects, wholly and completely different to the way a real baby would interpret their new life.

The “alien intelligence” approach allows Shua to begin by eviscerating the customs of humans, and then slowly come to accept, appreciate and love them. This is effective, though not always, as for example in the following:

The man worked in a sort of vault where they stored large quantities of the papers that humans used as a means of exchange. Octavio figured out that these papers were also the source of arguments between the man and the woman, and without understanding much about it, he took her side.

The paper is of course money; the dressing up of its nature isn't clever and doesn't say anything new - it's just a fancy way of extending things. As social satire, it's not good. As an aesthetic addition to the story at hand, it's clumsy and artificial.

But then there are times when it is very successful, and these times are by far the majority of the story. Shua captures the development of cool alien intelligence to hazy baby-mind well. Octavio shifts from calculating to loving, and while he retains much of his intellect, he loses the sharp edges, becoming what we expect from a baby.

Mama weaned Octavio at seven and a half months. Although he already had two teeth and could utter a couple of syllables that were meaningless to everyone else, Octavio continued to use (ever more often and with greater precision) his favorite strategy: crying. Weaning wasn’t easy because the baby rejected solid food and showed little enthusiasm for the bottle. Octavio knew he should feel satisfied—and even grateful—that a metal object filled with food or a rubber nipple came between his body and the woman’s, but he found no source of happiness within him. Now he could sit alone for long stretches of time and crawl along the floor. Soon the moment would arrive when he’d be able to say his first word, and he took comfort in daydreaming about the abrupt turnaround that would then take place in his relationship with the humans. And yet, his plans seemed jumbled and distant to him. Sometimes his previous life was hard to recall, or else he remembered it vaguely and chaotically, like a dream.

The woman’s physical presence was no longer essential to him, because his feeding didn’t depend directly on her, on her body. Why, then, was her absence more and more excruciating? Watching her disappear behind a door without knowing when she would return caused him almost physical pain, which he expressed through piercing shrieks. She would play hide-and-seek with him, covering her face with a cloth and shouting, ridiculously, “Where’s Mama? Where’s Mama?” Then she’d uncover her face, shouting, “Here’s Mama!” Octavio concealed his anguish with laughter that once again caused the disappearance of that face he nonetheless knew was so close by.

The end of Octavio the Invader is predictable but satisfying. Octavio becomes much like his older brother, which is to say, another traitor. Ana María Shua handles the evolution of the baby's mind well, and though there are a few minor awkward moments, by and large the satirical examination of societal norms is very effective. An excellent short story.

Octavio the Invader by Ana María Shua is a short story from Words Without Borders' October 2010 edition, Beyond Borges: Argentina Now issue. All of the work reviewed is freely available online.

See Also

Other stories from the Words Without Borders October 2010 edition, Beyond Borges: Argentina Now issue include:
---Bettencourt, Lúcia - Borges's Secretary
---Bizzio, Sergio - Magic!
---Brau, Edgar - The Key
---Delaney, Juan José - The Two Coins
---Giardinelli, Mempo - God's Punishment
---Martínez, Guillermo - The “I Ching” and the Man of Papers
---Schewblin, Samanta - Preserves

Also of interest: Index of short stories under review