A man dead by kicks. (4th Part)

Here is the fourth part of the story: "Un hombre muerto a puntapiés". You can find the first three parts of the story in here. And, you know, if you find any unforgivable mistake, please tell me.

Was the Ramirez dead, drunk? No, that couldn’t be, because the Police would have found out that immediately and the fact would be in the newspaper, and just to not have doubts, if by any chance the journalist forgot it, the Commisioner would have said that to me with out hesitation.

What other bad habit could the unhappy victim have? Because of being a vicious, he was; this, nobody could deny it. And what proves this, is he not declaring the reasons if the aggression. Any other cause could be said with no blush. For example, what would there be of embarrassing in these confessions?:

“An individual cheated on my daughter; I found him this night on the street; I was blind with anger, I treated him as a swine, I threw myself to his neck and he, helped by his friends, put me on this state” or

“My wife betrayed me with a man who I tried to kill, but him, stronger than me, started furious kicks against me” or

“I had some trouble with a godmother and her husband, for revenging she attacked me cowardly with her friends”

If this he would have said, nobody would find the deal strange.

Also, it was really easy to say:

“We had a brawl”

But I’m losing time, these hypothesis are unsustainable to me: in the first two cases, the people who debt the ill-fated; in the third one, his confession would have been unavoidable, because that was to honorable; in the forth one, we would also already know about it, because just for revenge, he would have said the names.

Nothing, that what was in my frown, was the evident. There was no more reasoning to be done. As a consequence, having all the conclusions, I have rebuilt, in resume, the tragic adventure that happened between Escobedo and García street, in these terms:

Octavio Ramírez, and individual of unknown nationality, of forty two years old, and of mediocre looks, lived in a modest hotel until the 12^th of January of this year.

It looks like the Ramírez guy lived of his rents, few, by the way, not allowing himself a lot of expenses, not even extraordinary, specially with woman. He had had since little a small deviation of instincts that depraved him in the future. Until, by a fatal impulse, he had to finish with the tragic end we all regret.

For more clarity, we must say that this individual had gotten to the city just a few days before.

The night of the 12^th of January, while he was eating in a dark cheap restaurant, he felt a known anxiety that went bothering him more and more. At eight, when he was going out, the torments of his desire were agitating him. In a strange city for him, the difficulty of satisfying it, by the ignorance that he had from the city, was irritating hi,. We walked, almost desperately, for about two hours by the main streets, putting his longing eyes in the backs of the man he found on the way; he followed the from close, trying to catch any chance, although distrustful of suffering a deception.

A man dead by kicks. (3rd Part)

Here is the third part of this translation. You can find the first posts in here.

And, once again I should say, if you find any spelling or grammar mistake that you think it's unforgivable, please tell me.

The first thing is to study the man, I said to myself. And I started working on it. I looked over and over again at the pictures, one by one, making of them a complete study. I looked at them closely and then I separated from them extending my hand, I tried to found out all of their mysteries.

Until finally, after having them before me, I had learned by heart the most hiding gesture.

That bulge out of the forehead; that long and strange nose that looks so much like a stopper! Those long and fallen mustaches; that pointy chin; that limp and agitated hair.

I took a paper and drew the lines that compose the face of the Ramirez dead.

Then, when the drawing was complete, I noted something was missing, that what I had before my eyes wasn’t him; that there was and added detail, one that was complementary and essential. There!

I took my pen again and completed the bust, that if it were from cast, it wouldn’t be out of place in some Academy. Bust, which’s chest had something of a woman.

Then… then I got angry with him. I put him an aureole! An aureole that sticks to the skull with a little nail, like in the churches they stick them to the figures of the saints.

Wonderful figure I was doing of the Ramírez dead.

But, why did this come? I was trying… trying to know why they killed him. Yes, why did they killed him… Then, I made the next logical conclusions:

The Ramírez dead was called Octavio Ramírez (an individual with that nose can not be called in a different way);

Octavio Ramírez was forty two years old:

Octavio Ramírez was short of money;

Octavio Ramírez was terribly dressed, and, in the end, our dead was a foreigner.

With these beautiful facts, his personality was totally rebuilt. There was only missing, well, that of the motive that for me was having more evidence. The intuition was revealing me everything. The only thing that I had to do was, honestly, to rule out all the other possibilities. The first, declared by him, the matter of the cigarette, didn’t even need to be meditated. It was absolutely absurd that an individual was victimized in such a way. He had lied, he had disguised the truth; more than that, murdered the truth, and he had said that, because the other one he didn’t want, he couldn’t say it.

A man dead by kicks (2nd part)

I come with the second part of the story by Pablo Palacios that I'm translating. The first part is in here: http://ni-en-pintura.blogspot.com/2009/10/man-dead-by-kicks.html Again, I must say that english is my second language and that if anybody finds a huge and unforgivable mistake, you should please tell me.


The first thing that comes up between the people who work in this, it’s the method. This is very well known for the university students, the normal students, the ones in schools and, in general, all the people that are going to be useful in their lives. There are two methods: deduction and induction (see Aristotle and Bacon).
The first one; I didn’t find the deduction interesting. I have been told that the deduction is a way to investigate that goes from the known thing to the least known. Good method: I confess. But I knew few about the issue and I had to pass the page.
The induction is something wonderful. It goes from the least know to the known… How is it? I can’t remember it quite well… Anyway, who knows about this stuff? If I have said well, this is the method par excellence. When you know few, you have to induce. Induce, man.

Once I was decided, I lighted the pipe and with this terrific weapon of induction in my hand, I was unresolved, without knowing what to do.

“Well, and how do I apply this wonderful method?” I asked myself.
This was the result of not having a depth study in logic! I was going to stay ignorant in the famous deal of the Escobedo and García streets just because of the damn laziness of the first years.

Discouraged, I took the Afternoon Daily, of January the thirteenth –it had never been off my table- and giving my well and full pipe energetic puffs, I started reading again the crime report that is in the beginning. I had to frown, like all man that’s a professional –a deep line in ones forehead is an unmistakable sign of attention!-

Reading, reading, there was a moment in which I was astonished.

Especially in the second to last paragraph, what said “This morning, the Commissioner of the 6th…” was the most wonderful thing. The phrase made my eyes sparkle: “The only thing that was known, by an accidental fact, is that the dead was a vicious” And I, by a secret force of intuition, that you can not understand, read like this: HE WAS A VISCIOUS, with incredibly big letters.

I think it was an Astartean revelation. The only point I could care about since then was to prove what kind of bad habit the Ramirez death had. Intuitively I had found out that he was… No, I don’t say it so I won’t turn the ladies against his memory.

And what I knew intuitively, I had to check with reason and, if it was possible, with evidence.

For this, I went to the Commissioner of the 6th, who could give me the revealing facts. The police authority hadn’t cleared up anything. He almost couldn’t understand what I wanted. After several explanations he said to me, while he scratched his frown.

“Oh!, yes… The business of the Ramirez guy… Look we were already discouraged about that crime. The thing was dark! But, take a sit; why don’t you sit sir? … As you already know, they brought him at about one and after two hours he died… the miserable. They took him two pictures, because of a case… some debt… Are you a relative of his? I give you my condolences, my most sincere…

“No sir” I said to him outraged “I haven’t even met him. I am a man that’s interested in justice” How the Commissioner would be tormented! I hurried so I wouldn’t inhibit him anymore.

“You have said two photographs. If I could see them…

The official opened a drawer in his desk and he rummaged between his papers. Then, he opened another one and rummaged another papers. In a third one, he finally found them.

And he was very nice:

“You are interested in this matter. Take them with you gentleman… But of course, you need to give them back” he said moving his head up and down at the same time he muttered the last syllables and showing me, happily, his yellow teeth.

I thanked him infinitely, saving the photographs.

“And tell me, mister Commissioner, couldn’t you remember any particular sign of the dead. Some fact that could reveal something?

“A sign… a fact… No, no. Well, he was completely vulgar man. Like of my height” The Commissioner was a bit tall “fat. But a particular sign… no… not one that I remember, at least”

As the Commissioner couldn’t say anything else, I went out thanking him again.

I went fast to my house, locked myself on the studio, lighted my pipe and took out the photographs which with that fact of the newspaper were wonderful documents.

I was sure I couldn’t get any others and my resolution was to work with what fortune had put in my hands.

It will continue...

A man dead by kicks. (1st Part)

I was looking, not long ago, for the story “Un hombre muerto a puntapiés” by Pablo Palacios in English for a friend of mine and I couldn’t find it on the web. After some time I decided that if I ever wanted her to read something about the Ecuadorian writer, I would have to translate it myself. So, I’ve decided to do it, and post the story in parts in this blog. Now, English is my second language, so if anybody finds a huge and unforgivable spelling or grammar mistake, please tell me, so I can change it.

You can find the complete story in Spanish, in this webpage: http://ecuadorliteratura.homestead.com/ppalacio1.html

A man dead by kicks.

How to throw to the basket the beating events of the streets?

To find out the truth is a moralizing action.

El COMERCIO from Quito.

“Last night, approximately at twelve and a half, the Policeman number 451, that was on service in that zone, found between Escobedo and García streets, an individual named Ramirez almost in complete state of weakness. The ill-fated was bleeding abundantly by the nose, and questioned by the Policeman said he was the victim of an aggression by some people he didn’t know, just because he asked them for a cigarette. The Policeman invited the assaulted to come with him to the Police Station with the object of him to declare what happened so they could solve the case, to which Ramirez denied rotundly. Then, the first, in the doing of his duty, requested help to one of the chaufferurs of the closes car stations and drove the wounded one to the Police Station, where, even after he was attended by the doctor Ciro Benavides, passed away after a few hours.

“This morning, the Commissioner of the 6^th has made the convenient procedures but hasn’t found anything about the murderers or the origin of Ramirez. The only thing that was known, by an accidental fact, is that the dead was a vicious*.

“We will try to continue communicating the news about how much we know of this mysterious crime”. There was nothing else in the crime report of the afternoon paper.

I don’t know in which mood I was then. The truth is that I laughed of satisfaction. ¡A mean dead by kicks! It was the funniest, the most comic of what could happen. I waited until the next day, in which I looked yearning to find something in the newspaper, but about my man, there were no lines. There wasn’t anything either on the next day. I think that after ten days nobody remembered what happened between Escobedo and García.

But, to me, it was obsessing. I was chased everywhere by the amusing phrase: ¡A man dead by kicks! And all the letters danced before my eyes, so happily that I decided finally to build the street scene or to go into, at least, the mystery of why a citizen was killed in such a ridiculous way.

Good heavens. I would have wanted to make an experimental study. But I have seen in books that such studies are just about investigating the how of the things, and between my first idea, which was this, of building, and the one that finds out the reasons that moved a few individuals to attack another one with kicks, the most original and beneficial one for the human specie was the second. Well, the why of the things, they say, is concerning to the philosophy, and I never knew what of philosophical my investigations would have. Besides, everything that goes with that word confuses me. With this, fearful and discouraged, I lightened the pipe. “This is essential, very essential”

it will continue...

*It was really hard for me to find a translation for this word: "vicioso" as in that time (the time when the story was written, it meant: "homosexual").

Translation by: Gabriela Cabezas