don’t ask what any of this means
By Carla Bessa
Translated from Portuguese by Elton Uliana
all I know is that I have to run. that’s the premise of my being-in-the-world: running, that’s how I’m programmed. the reason for my ejection, as a necessity and priority of dasein, in exactly the philosophical sense that heidegger mean—do you get me? I was hurled into the flow without being consulted, and I let myself go.
others are running alongside me, many of them, we are countless. earlier on, we’d been crammed into the starting gate for hours. some of us gave up right there. But that’s irrelevant. we are many.
some sort of collective or dasein-plasma. but it’s only after the starting shot that things truly begin. we run through each other, over each other, shoving and knocking each other down. whoever wants to make it has to have strong elbows. that is, of course, a metaphor, because we, none of us have elbows. we are basically one giant head and one long tail. and we’re always wagging it, trying to please and to push forward. it’s encoded in our dna this drive to compete.
but even at high speed, only a few of us make it to the next stage. it’s built into the system and it’s brutal. even more brutal than savage capitalism. I watch my fellow creatures fall behind, but I continue. there’s no time for sentimentality. I have twenty-four hours, that’s all.
I’m one of the fastest. I keep going. I won’t give up—this was drilled into my head. I run, swim, row, pierce—as you can see. after many dropped out, the channel became more spacious, but now it’s narrowing again. the walls are moving, the ground shakes. objects fly in our direction. pieces of I don’t know what. something menacing hangs in the air. literally. we’re under attack. perceived as foreign bodies. it seems that they’re not fond of outsiders here. fewer and fewer of us. run. keep going, says the voice in my giant head. just don’t ask why, don’t ask what any of this means.
I can already see the finishing line. some colleagues near me are also almost there. once the goal is achieved, we become superfluous. then, self-destruction kicks in. it’s preprogrammed. we understand our being-in-the-world in relation to the thing itself. being-towards-death, heidegger, take note. it is beginning. we are almost there. one will enter. only one. only one will penetrate the heart of the secret. the others will be repelled at the last second. abandoned in the dark red. the door, closed in our faces. we’ve known this. from the beginning. and yet, we continue. it’s programmed.
This story won 3rd place at the 2024 Off-FLIP Literary Festival Prize.
About the Author
Carla Bessa is a writer, theatre director and translator from German to Portuguese, she was born in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro and currently living in Berlin. She is the author of four books: three collections of short stories—Aí eu fiquei sem esse filho [It Was Then That I Lost That Child] (Editora Oito e Meio, 2017), Urubus [Vultures] (Editora Confraria dos Ventos, 2020), winner of the 2020 Jabuti Prize in the category “short story,” and second place at the 2020 Brazilian National Library Award, Todas Umas [All Are One] (Confraria dos Ventos, 20220—and Minha Murilo [My Murilo](Confraria dos Ventos, 2021). Vultures and Todas Umas have been translated into German by Transit Verlag and Aí eu fiquei sem esse fillho into Greek by Skarifima Editions. Bessa won the distinguished Off–Flip (Parati Literary Fair) Short Story Award twice, in third place with a microfiction from Todas Uma (2022) and third place with an unpublished story (2024). Her short stories have been published in Your Impossible Voice, Oxford Anthology of Translation, and multiple times in Asymptote in Elton Uliana’ translation.
About the Translator
Elton Uliana is a Brazilian writer, literary critic, and translator based in London. He is the co-editor of the Brazilian Translation Club at University College London (UCL), where he is also a guest lecturer on translation theory. He is a member of Out of the Wings Theatre Translation Collective at King’s College London, and a reader with the Royal Court Theatre London for their International Plays in Translation project 2023. His work has been published in multiple anthologies including Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Short Fiction (UCL Press, 2024), Daughters of Latin America: An International Anthology of Writing by Latine Women (HarperCollins, 2023), and Oxford Anthology of Translation (Oxford Press, 2022). His work is also featured in other specialised journals, including Art in Translation (Routledge), Massachusetts Review, Asymptote, Latin American Literature Today, West Branch, and Tablet. Uliana was part of the judging panel for the 2023 PEN American Translation Prize. He is currently working on the translation of a volume of plays by Howard Barker into Brazilian Portuguese.
