THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

3.3 Reinventing the Double The Avatar in PanamaComprendí de golpe que el resto de loshombres que habían estando bailando al llegaryo, se hallaban congregados en el cuerpo delque ahora lanzaba miradas de odio a lasmultiples formas de mi ser (34).At the same time his own image becomes annexed to the othermen present at the dance, eventually overwhelming and substitutingthem. He feels the music and lights divide him and the idea oftransubstantiation is alluded to: “Yo estaba presente en cada nuevaparteque se desprendía de mi ser principal” (33). 52 The individualmultiplies and confronts his many replicas, his avatars, and this divisionis provoked by his desire to find social acceptance or a sensualencounter. In the last paragraphs, the subject’s perspective changesfrom I to we eventhough the we speaks in first person perhapsindicating that we are always many. However, it is the original yo who isultimately ejected by his others from the venue. This is Jaramillo Levi’sonly story of the sort in which the doubles are multiplied.As seen in Part One, characters are fused or merged with theirother. This fusion technique was explored in “La tarde del encuentro”and “Rostro”, stories which were contrasted with du Maurier’s TheScapegoat, and Cortázar’s “Lejana” respectively. 53 It is also thefoundation for the characters in “La fuente”, a story which explores theunification of two selves; a dead and a resurrected self, within thecontext of a classic merging of time and space.The man’s double has all the signs of an almost identicalresurrected double, and his second self is variously described as: “midoble”, and “una presencia tan real como la mía resurrecta” (11). Hisdouble has his voice, but not his gunshot wound: “lo oímos pronunciartu nombre con mi voz […] la cabeza idéntica a la mía sin huella algunade violencia” (12), and: “me vi un poco envejecido en la figura del otro,en él derrotado para siempre” (13). There are two realities confontingeach other: “Una realidad frente a otra, ambas hechas de la mismasustancia metafísica” (12). The husband is fused momentarily with thewife in the fountain of “La fuente” perhaps symbolic of a rebirth giventhe language and symbolism. However, the memory of the suicidescene infiltrates the present and the couple is forced to part. His deadself appears and attempts to annex the new husband but the former isupstaged by the latter and two parts of the one individual, the healthy,strong husband and the sick, weak one who committed suicide, arereunited.52 See 2.1 The North American Double, footnote 28.53 See 1.2 Fantastic Psychoanalysis, 69 and 2.3 Dobles and Duplos, 119.246