Keif was mysterious. I still have a photograph of when he was very young. Through his half-closed eyelids, you could see the flickering, yellow ferocity of his eyes. I felt frightened when he was watching me. I met him one January afternoon when I first went to Fedora’s house to buy a German tape recorder that I had seen advertised in a newspaper. When I arrived, I found the door open. People leave their houses unlocked in seaside resorts. I went in without clapping my hands or giving the outdated cry of ‘Ave Maria’, as my great-grandmother used to, and which I sometimes pronounced in the voice of an old lady for a bit of fun. I saw Keif sitting at the foot of the stairs. I experienced a moment of terror, thinking that terror could cost me dear. Don’t dogs get mad when one is frightened? Keif did not stir himself; he crossed one paw over the other and flicked away a fly with his tail. I stood stock still in the doorway, thinking any other movement I might make to enter or leave could cost me my life. In the silence, everything became more unreal. I thought I was dreaming or that they had put the wrong address in the newspaper. After a few moments, I heard the sound of footsteps and saw a woman appear at the top of the stairs, with her scent of nail varnish and cosmetics.

[private]“What do you want?” she whispered, as if revealing a secret.
“Is Señorita Fedora Brown in?”
“That’s me. Have you come about the ad?”
“I’ve come to see the tape recorder.”
“Come on up,” she said, and descending the stairs, added: “Don’t be afraid. Keif won’t hurt you.”
Saying this, she leaned over and took hold of the chain that was hooked onto to Keif’s collar.
“He obeys me,” said Fedora.
She separated Keif’s paws with her foot and imperiously ordered him to stand. We went upstairs.
“This way. The tape recorder’s in my bedroom.”
We entered a room whose windows gave a view of the sea.
“Here it is,” she said, showing me a grey case. “It’s the only thing I brought back from my last trip. This case and Keif.”
“Aren’t you afraid of him?”
“Afraid?” she asked. “He’s tamer than a trained dog.”
“Does he eat a lot?”
“An awful lot. Like a horse. Watching him eat gives me indigestion.”
Keif did not take his eyes off her as she spoke. From time to time she murmured, “Quiet Keif!” although the tiger made no move.
“Keif? Why did you call him Keif?” I enquired.
“In Arabic, Keif means ‘to savour animal existence without the annoyance of conversation, the unpleasantness of memory or the vanity of thought’. It suits him well, doesn’t it?”
“He couldn’t be called anything else,” I answered emphasising the final words.
“I get a certain satisfaction from training him. If I were younger, I’d work in a circus with him.”
“And aren’t you young?”
“One is never young enough. When you’re four, perhaps. But what’s the use?” Looking at Keif, she added quietly: “I believe I hypnotise him with my eyes.”
“And what if he were to hypnotise you?”
“Him, hypnotise me? I’ve never considered the possibility.”
We did not speak for a moment and, to interrupt the silence, I asked:
“Have you got anything else for sale?”
“Yes I have. For instance: a diamond ring, an emerald bracelet, my fur coats, a Renoir and this tape recorder. I don’t need to sell them, it’s because I like changes. In place of the diamond, I’ll buy a sapphire; in place of the mink coats, a sable coat; in place of the emeralds, rubies; in place of the Renoir, a Picasso and in place of the tape recorder, a camera. Money, however much of it you may have, has its limits. As soon as I get bored with things, I sell them and, as they’re always good quality, I get a good price for them. I’ve been like that since I was a child. Do you want to try out the tape recorder? I’ve got a pre-recorded tape.”
She lifted the lid of the case, moved the dials and we heard a series of growls. In raptures, she said:
“It’s Keif. Do you recognise him?”
This was followed by a harsh voice.
“That’s me,” she murmured “speaking to Keif. Would you like to record something?”
I recorded a few monosyllables while observing how to use the tape recorder, which I decided to buy.
We continued talking for a while, watching the sea and a distant sailing boat. Fedora told me that she was independent by nature, but that after her last trip, because of Keif, she had lost her independence.
“Everything binds us. When we least expect it, we’re enslaved.”
I had forgotten Keif’s presence. The windows were wide open.
“I don’t know what to do with him,” said Fedora, watching Keif out of the corner of her eye and speaking in English, as if she did not want him to understand. “I care so much for him, but I can’t keep him always with me. He is a nuisance. In the Zoo they want to buy him for a lot of money.”
“And why don’t you?” I answered in my bad English.
“I can’t. I simply can not do it.”
The disproportionate pain in her reply moved me. As I was taking my leave, I perhaps came too close to her and then stepped back.
“He’s jealous,” she told me.
I paid what she was asking for the tape recorder without haggling, picked up the case and went downstairs, promising Fedora that I would come back to visit her.
As I had not thoroughly understood how to work the tape recorder, I soon went to see her again for an explanation. She was lying on a sunlit beach mat in front of the window, almost nude. Keif was sleeping at her feet like a stuffed animal. Delacroix would have painted this exotic scene well. Having given me the necessary explanations, Fedora said:
“I’m determined to change my life. I’m fed up with this one.”
“Are you going to enter a convent?”
“No. I’m going to leave this life.”
“Do you believe in the transmigration of souls?” I enquired with a smile.
“Naturally,” she replied.
“And how are you going to do it, Fedora?” I asked, using her Christian name for the first time. “It’s as difficult to change lives as it is to change bodies.”
“I’m going to commit suicide.”
“Commit suicide?”
“No. It’s not the least tragic; I’m going to kill myself in a pleasant way.”
“Are there pleasant ways to kill yourself?”
“Possibly. Anything unpleasant can be done in a pleasant way, and I don’t accept the idea that a pleasant act can become unpleasant at any given moment. I adore the sea; whenever I go swimming, I want to stay in the water longer: stay until I die. That’s what I’m going to do: allow myself to die in the delights of the water. At dawn, on a beautiful morning, I’ll go into the sea as I do on any other day; I’ll feel the bubbling of the water on my skin. No, it won’t be a tragic suicide, like Alfonsina Storni’s in Mar del Plata, or a pathetic one, like Virginia Woolf’s in some river or other in England. I’ll go on bathing until midday, until the end of the afternoon. Then the twilight will follow and night and the sunrise will return, and the next morning, midday and twilight and night, and the next sunrise; and I’ll feel the changes in temperature and see the colours of the water, I’ll exist side by side with the algae, the spray, the dew, until the end when, swooning, defenceless, I’ll dissolve like a lump of sugar or fill up with water like a sponge. Afterwards, my soul will wander in gentle search of a body, so as to live again. It will find a newborn child or animal, or take advantage of a fainting human being to enter through the interstices that loss of consciousness leave in the body. I’ll let myself die in a pleasant way, and then will come the best of all: another life. Don’t you see?”
“I see,” I muttered. “But I don’t think anyone is capable of doing something like that. Are you tired of life?”
“I have everything that one could ask for in this world, even a stretch of beach of my own.”
“No one is capable of letting themselves die in the water that way,” I protested.
“I am.”
I laughed but, ignoring me, she continued:
“Would you take care of Keif? That’s the only thing that worries me: to abandon Keif seems cowardice. I’d leave you money for his food. I’d make a will; I might even leave you everything I have.”
I thought that I could never have dreamed of receiving an inheritance under such strange circumstances.
“Do you accept?” asked Fedora, lighting a cigarette. “I leave you all my possessions and I won’t even ask you to wear mourning. Do you accept?” she repeated.
“I accept if it pleases you,” I told her, feeling guilty.
Was it perhaps a joke? Would I incite her to commit suicide by accepting her proposition? I dropped to my knees on the mat beside her.
“Enough joking, Fedora. All these crazy things you say seem so serious that I’m tempted to believe you.”
“Believe me,” said Fedora, but her expression seemed to contradict her words.
She put out the cigarette in the ashtray and, without looking in the mirror, casually straightened her hair and applied lipstick, arching her slightly parted lips, then she lay face down on the mat to sunbathe.
“In my next reincarnation I might be an Amazon. No Theseus or Achilles will vanquish me.”
“So, you’ll be in search of the past?” I joked.
“A circus rider,” she continued, “or an animal tamer; perhaps I’d prefer the latter. It’s my vocation. I’ll salute the audience after putting my head into a lion’s mouth. I’m always thinking of the differences there will be between this life and the other. It’s so amusing.”
How often I walked with Fedora along the shore, following the line of the surf on the sand! A few days passed without my seeing her. As I did not know when she was joking and when serious, her threat of suicide did not worry me greatly. As for her digressions on the transmigration of the soul, I put them down to reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which someone had given her for her birthday. I began to worry about her future. I had noticed something most peculiar in her behaviour: when she left the house, she would look deeply into Keif’s eyes and say: “Will I ever see you again, my love? What will you do without me in this world, my angel?”
Such is friendship: you live a whole life without seeing a person and, suddenly, they are the only important thing in your life. I went to visit Fedora one hot morning, as the sun was coming up. She had told me that whenever it was warm, she went down to swim at dawn. I had threatened to surprise her in a lie: I knew that she was a late riser. We made a pact: on hot days, if I woke up before her, I would get her up to accompany me to the beach; if she woke first, she would come to get me. My holidays were coming to an end and I thought I would not be able to visit her at any other hour: like a true lazybones, Fedora never had time for anything. I took advantage of the unwontedly early hour to approach the house cautiously and knock at the door. Nobody answered. I noticed that the door was not locked. As soon as I opened it, Keif sped out of the house. I entered and ran upstairs: there was nobody there. I put my head out of the window that looked onto Fedora’s stretch of beach, and saw the outline of Keif’s body, gliding through the ghostly dawn light like an enormous stray dog. He stopped at the water’s edge, sniffing the water, advancing and retreating with the movement of the waves, until he lay down, flattened against the sand. It did not occur to me that Fedora had been capable of fulfilling her wild plan until I saw a sealed envelope on the table, with my name and the word ‘will’ written on it. I went down to the beach. Where was the immense wave that used to cover me in my recurrent dream? That dream which had haunted me since my childhood. No. No, it was not a dream. How was the dream different from reality? In its duration, in the smell. Keif smelled like a wild animal. It was five in the morning, I was carrying the cold chain and slightly rusty collar. For hours, Keif and I watched the rose-coloured dawn waters that would later bring in Fedora’s glistening body. When I saw it, I thought: ‘I mustn’t faint. I’m cold and trembling.’ I lost consciousness.
Nobody, except me, was surprised that Fedora had drowned. She was not a cautious swimmer. Nobody, except me, was surprised by her will. She had no relatives and was eccentric.
With no greater complications than those pertaining to Keif, I installed myself in Fedora’s house. This was a surprise to my family, who accused me of rebelliousness, rashness and lack of dignity. I spent time with her friends – those friendships formed in partings that one always has in seaside resorts: they revealed the dead woman’s secrets to me. I pored over her photograph album, which was like a small, illustrated history of her life; I slept in her bed, read by the light of the same lamp that had illuminated her book. I looked at myself in her mirror, used her perfume, combed my hair with her combs. Under the moon, under the sun, I saw the view through her window at every hour of the day. My personality changed. On several occasions, people made disturbing remarks, such as, ‘You look like Fedora from a distance.’ or even, ‘You said that just like Fedora used to.’ I believed that Fedora had taken possession of me when she died.
My life passed, like Fedora’s with Keif, in tranquil happiness by the sea. I had foreseeable difficulties: the gardener did not want to work for me; he said that half of what I spent on Keif’ could feed all his children. He could not bear this unfairness. My maid also left because she wanted me to raise her salary in relation to what I spent on Keif’s maintenance. Keif slowly became accustomed to me. He sometimes seemed to be waiting for Fedora.
I had four pleasant years, though, in their letters, my family tried to sour my existence.
How can I describe a timeless life like that? My idle hours went from grandeur to grandeur. From those days, I only remember vistas, changes of light, fragrances, tastes, music. My only worry was the feeling that I had become Fedora. Horrified, I would suddenly recall my unwary fainting fit at the sea’s edge when I had seen Fedora’s drowned body. I asked the people who had come to my rescue if anything unusual had happened at that moment, and I questioned the doctor they had called. It was no use. I remained impassive, however, as if I were looking on the cause of my unease from a distance.
One day, at five in the afternoon, a man accompanied by his family knocked on the door. They needed to talk to me. The man was tall, spare and had red hair. The woman was of medium height, and so thin that, even seen in full face, she always appeared to be in profile. They had with them a four-year-old child, dressed in tight red trousers and a blue vest. I showed them into Fedora’s room and said:
“Don’t be afraid.”
“Keif won’t do anything,” lisped the child.
Had I heard wrongly? I wondered where she had heard that name. It seemed to me that she had said Keif. They were not local people and had had no opportunity to see him.
As if in common accord, the family smiled and the little girl immediately had to ride on Keif’s back. The parents, far from opposing this, urged her to repeat the exercise as soon as she got down. Strangest of all was the affection that Keif showed for the child.
After a few false starts, the man told me:
“We’re from the Amazonia Circus. We’ve come to ask you to sell us this beast.” Pointing to the child, he added: “We want her to be an animal tamer; it’s in her blood. She likes horses too; she could be a famous horsewoman, but there are a lot of them in our company. With our permission, she’s already put her head in a lion’s mouth once and done other, equally dangerous stunts. She attracts big crowds from all around to our circus. The dwarf from Costa Rica presents her.
“But she’s always asking for a tiger,” interrupted the woman. “We’ll pay whatever you ask.”
The child had clasped her arms around Keif’s neck and was looking at me with suppliant eyes. I agreed to their request.[/private]

(Translation: Christina MacSweeney)
Silvina Ocampo (Buenos Aires, 1903 – 1993) is one of Argentina’s most respected writers of the 20th century. During her life she published seven collections of short stories, plus numerous volumes of poetry and translations. She frequently contributed to her sister Victoria’s famous literary magazine, Sur, and also collaborated with her husband, Adolfo Bioy Casares, and Jorge Luis Borges to edit the renowned Anthology of Fantastic Literature.

Christina MacSweeney is a Spanish-English translator with a special interest in Latin American literature. She completed her Masters in Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia in 2003; her latest publication is a translation of Ricardo Waale’s ‘A Special Day’ for the Short Story website, www.theshortstory.org.uk.

‘Keif’ was first published by Sudamericana in Los días de la noche (1970). It was reissued in 1999 in Silvina Ocampo: Cuentos completos II (Emecé Editores).This is the first English-language publication of the story.

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