THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

3.3 Reinventing the Double The Avatar in Panamasenos, acechándole la boca abierta por dondeno escaparía el segundo grito (106).The sister’s demise has been interpreted by Patricia Mosier in“Caja de resonancias”, as “una especie de incesto simbólico” (143), andas incest itself by Ricardo Segura who suggests the boy-plant rapes hissister. 29 Sexual references aside, it can be reasonably assumed that hissister is to be smothered and suffocated by her sibling.Another story of botanic consumption, “En el jardín” (ACO),opens with a double beginning which sets up the expectation of afantastic element, “Todo es posible, hasta lo imposible” (57). A childdeliberately uproots and swallows a flower from his garden, its ownertells the reader. Fantastically, the flower is regurgitated in tact, and itimmediately grows into an enormous iridescent flower whose brightyellow tongue-like pistil envelops the offending child. In retaliation, theplant swallows him whole, and he is never to be seen again:“Convertida ahora en planta grandísima que sobresale en mi jardín, esaflor conserva no obstante su autonomía” (58). This event appears to bethe start of a lucrative business which grows and grows like the numberof missing children; “Cada tanto tiempo la historia, con variantesmenores, se repite […] Sobre todo cuando algún niño travieso dejaatrás la excursión en que venía y se siente tentado a transgredir latensa paz de mis dominios”; and his strange plants: “Mis plantas, sobretodo los papos, se multiplican, se agigantan, están tan felices” (58-59).This regenerated carnivorous flower hints at the sinister, as does thetale “Dueña y señora” which tells of the instantaneous transformation ofa plucked rose into a new one. The energy and beauty the flowersummons from its roots for this rebirth drains the other flowers of theirs:“Pétalo a pétalo renace, hasta recuperar no sólo el esplandor de suantigua belleza sino también esa otra que simultáneamente dejan detener todas las demás rosas” (35). 30 These stories subtly explore theparasitic factor of doubling, a symbiotic element linked to vampirism,from the realm of the Gothic.The alteration from woman to abstract object of dusk or night isdepicted in “Recordando desde el tedio”, in which one half of the textcontrasts with the other. The first half transforms itself from the positiverecollections of a memorable childhood visit to the zoo, to the reenactmentof a nightmarish experience of a woman’s near drowningand sexual assault that results in her murder of the attacker in the29 Ricardo Segura, “El poder de la palabra artística: Aproximación a la obra cuentisticade Enrique Jaramillo Levi”, Puertas y ventanas (San José: Editorial UniversitariaCentroamericana, 1990) 21.30 These botanic variations also occur in several of Ana María Shua’s stories featuredin Botánica del caos. See “Un curso muy útil”, Botánica del caos (Buenos Aires:Sudamericana, 2000) 17.234