THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

3.3 Reinventing the Double The Avatar in Panamaazoteas por todas partes; instalado en lacúspide de un insólito rascacielos, asediado porel veinte y cinco sombras con zapatos, estoy alborde del abismo; sé que el momento delcolapso no demora (80). 50He is still clearly aware of his own physical boundaries and thereasons behind his limitation of the self. The sounds of reality aregradually incorporated into this unreal state, this dream scenario: “lapresencia de un aliento entrecortado; alguien sufre o duerme; o sufremientras duerme, porque hay angustia, dolor incluso, en esta queja queme llega” (81). The protagonist creates two “planos de realidaddesplazados”, on both sides of the mirror: the present which revolvesaround the torture on one side, and his memory and refuge on theother. He must mentally move from one body to the other in order tounite them: “salgo del sitio abstracto que me guarda y me desplazohacia el cuerpo que continúa mirándose en el espejo” (81). After hedoes so, the planes merge again contaminating the boundaries of eachother. Reality beckons and: “me permite recordar por un brevísimoinstante cómo he tenido que hundirme en la demencia”. He has hadeither to resort to madness or to feign it. The disintegration takes placeon a psychic and physical level in:mi cuerpo, minado por golpes y descargaseléctricas, es un panal asediado por la muerte;¡Sésamo, ábrete!, grito en el últimointerrogatorio, ¡ábrete y trágame de una vez ypara siempre porque no resisto ya este calvario!(82)“La sombra” ends with the victim succumbing to his assailants’torture; he is “convertido ya en una sola sombra, agonizante (82). Hehas desintegrated into non-existence.“La fiesta del sótano” is the classic story of a literalschizophrenic disassociation, and one of the author’s favourites. 51 In it,the principal character divides, and then multiplies, disintegrating intomany selves and fragmenting into multiple replicas:50 This idea of being on the edge of an abyss is prevalent in Sá Carneiro’s “Eu PróprioO Outro”: “Sinto a minha personalidade abismar-me” (170). Compare “El muerto”:“estoy perdido de mi mismo (97)”; and “La sombra”: “estoy al borde del abismo (97)”with Sá-Carneiro’s “Eu Próprio O Outro”: “Sinto a minha personalidade abismar-me”(170) / “I feel I am losing my personality (143)”. Jull Costa, “Myself the Other.” See 1.2Myself, the Other, 61.51 See Sancho Más. Romero Pérez reports that Jaramillo Levi remembers a placeexactly like this setting in “La fiesta del sótano”. Mirada oblicua 106.245