THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

3.3 Reinventing the Double The Avatar in Panamaacuchillado por la tardía irrupción de lavergüenza. Jane suelta el bisturí, empuja haciaun lado el bulto que la cubre, mientras gritadesenfrenadamente sin saber ya dónde seencuentra (189).While the murder of the doctor seems clear, the motivatingfactors behind it are ambiguous. The reader must decide whether Janehas been taken advantage of by the doctor, or whether she did in factrecall her previous crime from the hypnotic state.The narration from multiple perspectives is also prevalent inJaramillo Levi's short stories, and this can confound the doubles anddeoubling further. “El incidente” has a simultaneous doubling ofperspectives in which the protagonists who witness a dying man and hisfriend are, in fact, those two characters, the dying man and his friend.To illustrate these perspectives, the story’s paragraphs alternate frompresent to past, the last of which describes the victim and reminiscingnarrator, Jaime, dying. Duplication, repetition, and cycles abound in “Elincidente” which begins at once in media res, and almost at its own end.In this story of doubles, there are points of view alternating from past topresent and from the perspective of supposed witness of the event tothat of the injured man at the centre of it. It starts with the predictions ofthe two men who, at the moment they approach a huddle of people,come across two other men leaning over “el bulto”. When one of theassisting men gets up to ask for an ambulance, they see a stabbingvictim dying on the pavement.From the beginning the protagonist is recalling events; he isaddressing himself even though his interlocutor seems to be a secondperson, Jaime. The moribund victim of the last paragraph takes thestory not only back to its beginning but also to various other storieswithin Duplicaciones. There are dual temporal spheres and parallelpersectives to express the real and the remembered. As he plungesinto an ante-mortem delirium, characters and memories from his real orimagined past emerge like the protagonist’s young lover in “Llantopresentido” and eponymous subject in “Nereida”, and the unborn childthat, “llora en algún sitio que no es ya tu vientre” (47). The thirdparagraph holds a double clue and dual perspective that referssimultaneously to the subject (the person remembering), and to theobject (the victim) of the fiction: “Hoy he recordado aquel incidente”(46). He is reminded of it by his unexpected view of the sky. “Todavíasoy capaz de anhelar que mi amigo me confirme si aún estamos en laesquina de Obregón viendo alejarse una ambulancia” (47). Finally, thepair of perspectives becomes conjoined as the storyteller-spectatorreveals himself to be the passerby-victim. 59 “El incidente” is notable as it59 Romero Pérez, La mirada oblicua 97.252