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Before getting into bed, Gaspar Santos plopped his dentures into a glass of water. He adjusted himself into a comfortable position between the sheets, sinking into the softened mattress, and eased gently into his sleep.
Back in his younger days he had been a pearl hunter, and in the wee hours of night he dreamt he was diving deep in the sea, exposed once again to sharks and fanciful currents. Darkness and silence besieged him, and no matter which way he looked, he could not make out an oyster. All at once he realized he had descended deeper than was advisable and his oxygen would run out before he could reach the surface. Gaspar Santos’s muffled scream was released as a burst of panic bubbles. He flapped his arms and feet, convinced he would not make it. Unable to calculate the distance, he felt he would soon capitulate, but in the exact instant in which he involuntarily thrust open his mouth, he emerged to the surface of sleep and gulped an unexpected mouthful of air.
Soaked in sweat, he became aware of the clinic as his breathing slowly returned to normal. His eyes then caught on the dentures. The bluish light filtering in through the window blurred the outlines of the glass, and he discovered a likeness that made him burst out in laughter. His prosthetic teeth, submerged in the bottom of his glass, resembled a marine oyster. Gaspar Santos’s laugh bounced against the walls and multiplied in the night of Mindanao. It was a laugh imbued with generosity and delight; all that was missing was his teeth.
Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and current resident of Los Angeles, California, Pablo Baler is a writer, art critic, and scholar. Several of his novels and short story collections appeared originally in Spanish. His debut novel in English Gilroy’s Gloryhole was awarded the 2025 New American Fiction Prize. Translations of his micro-fictions and short stories have appeared on Ninth Letter, X-Ray, and Latin American Literature Today.
His translator, Slava Faybysh, was born in Ukraine and grew up in the Chicago area. Faybysh’s first full-length fiction translation was a historical thriller set in Argentina during the dictatorship years, called Rodolfo Walsh’s Last Case, by Elsa Drucaroff.
