Senor Volto
Sep. 27th, 2004 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coalescentTrujillo features as a direct setting for the first time in this story, but it's a second-hand report. Aurelio Ucles, a carnival showman, was born there, and is telling us the story of his time there. He's a Senor Volto; with a car battery strapped to his chest and paddles on his hands, he challenges people to step up and endure an electric shock, as a test of bravery. His story describes how he became who he is; why he's the real Senor Volto.
Ucles inherited a hotel in Trujillo and lived there for some years, though never making as much money as he might out of the arrangement because the town--a centre for violent crime and drug trafficking--doesn't really attract that many tourists. Indeed, most of his income is provided by the staff of the local prison. Ucles blames Tito Obregon, the local mechanic, for the circumstances that led him to become Senor Volto. Of course a woman was also involved, although (possibly in a moment of self-awareness) Shepard has Ucles insist that 'it would be nearly as accurate to claim it was a woman, but I am appalled by cliches' (p.408).
The woman was Sadra Rosales. With a showman's flair, Ucles introduces her by saying that 'she suited the moment, she pleased my heart, she excited my body, and she was grounds for divorce'. She was also Tito's woman, and the mechanic's jealous reaction is to dress as Senor Volto and goad Ucles into being electrocuted. Thereafter, Ucles is strangely disconnected from reality; he looks around and sees 'a mingling of the past and possibilities' (p.417). Much of the second half of the story takes place in this hallucinatory state, which enables Ucles to discover that not only has he been cheating on his wife, but she's been cheating on him (it is a curiously soapy story by Shepard's standards). Eventually Ucles' visions expand to reveal elusive creatures of electricity and light flying in the air around and above humans.
This seemed to me one of the less successful stories in the collection. It failed to fully engage me, and I think that's in part because it lacks a clear focus. Ucles' story is unreliable--as he himself admits, he may simply be spinning his audience a yarn to tempt them up to challenge Senor Volto--and it's hard to find rhyme or reason in any of it. The story itself remains beautiful, but as oblique, as the creatures of electricity and thought that inhabit it.
[Back to Trujillo index]
Ucles inherited a hotel in Trujillo and lived there for some years, though never making as much money as he might out of the arrangement because the town--a centre for violent crime and drug trafficking--doesn't really attract that many tourists. Indeed, most of his income is provided by the staff of the local prison. Ucles blames Tito Obregon, the local mechanic, for the circumstances that led him to become Senor Volto. Of course a woman was also involved, although (possibly in a moment of self-awareness) Shepard has Ucles insist that 'it would be nearly as accurate to claim it was a woman, but I am appalled by cliches' (p.408).
The woman was Sadra Rosales. With a showman's flair, Ucles introduces her by saying that 'she suited the moment, she pleased my heart, she excited my body, and she was grounds for divorce'. She was also Tito's woman, and the mechanic's jealous reaction is to dress as Senor Volto and goad Ucles into being electrocuted. Thereafter, Ucles is strangely disconnected from reality; he looks around and sees 'a mingling of the past and possibilities' (p.417). Much of the second half of the story takes place in this hallucinatory state, which enables Ucles to discover that not only has he been cheating on his wife, but she's been cheating on him (it is a curiously soapy story by Shepard's standards). Eventually Ucles' visions expand to reveal elusive creatures of electricity and light flying in the air around and above humans.
This seemed to me one of the less successful stories in the collection. It failed to fully engage me, and I think that's in part because it lacks a clear focus. Ucles' story is unreliable--as he himself admits, he may simply be spinning his audience a yarn to tempt them up to challenge Senor Volto--and it's hard to find rhyme or reason in any of it. The story itself remains beautiful, but as oblique, as the creatures of electricity and thought that inhabit it.
[Back to Trujillo index]
