'Of Daggers and Wounds', a novel by Laura Restrepo

These days , Laura Restrepo delivers her new novel : 'I am the dagger and I am the wound', a title that perfectly reflects the world created by the author in these pages. From one of her previous works, "Pecado", she takes up a character, the protagonist of Pelo de elefante, and settles with his stories and thoughts in these new pages, unfolding her universe of horror. As in all her novels and texts, in this one, Laura dialogues with the situation and the moment we are living in globally and nationally: a world of violence and terror in which all possible rules of coexistence between humans have been broken.

This time, to explore this harsh and absurd reality, he chooses a literary form close to farce, farce, extreme satire ... permeated throughout by a subtle irony that constantly unsettles and challenges readers. Through a linguistic torrent, we are delivered feelings, thoughts, reflections, stories... that always lead us to unravel underlying meanings that frequently slip away.

I want to note the author's recurring concern throughout her work with looking deeply into and unraveling the roots and meanings of evil in the hearts of humans and their societies . It's a semantic axis to which she always returns in one way or another: Leopardo al sol (Leopard in the Sun), Hot sur (Hot Sur), Delirio (Delirium), Los Divinos (The Divines), and, of course, Pecado (Pecado). As someone familiar with her work, I can affirm that one of her obsessions as a writer is this: the presence of evil. Individual, intimate, social... what are its motives? And I believe that, furthermore, in the perspective of several of her perspectives, one perceives an implicit affirmation of the underlying relationship between evil and a realm that borders on the religious or the sacred, a distortion of this reality. Perhaps both move in elusive terrain that goes beyond reason.

In this latest novel, a hitman, an executioner... an executor of evil and death speaks to us. The narrator makes an effort to inhabit and speak from that place, and that effort is very convincing. On the first page, she introduces herself: Misericordia Dagger is her name; she has a clear and defined profession: wielding the axe or the dagger to execute her victims; in other words, she is an executioner. But she is not an autonomous criminal who kills according to her own initiative or desire; on the contrary, she is "sent" and controlled by a god who presides over death: Abismo, who is presented in a feminine form; that is, the representation of evil in this case is a woman. In this introduction, Misericordia clarifies that she only believes in a god of blood, and from there, she tells us the story of her final days, which she interweaves with a leaping account of weapons and instruments of death.

In that dangerous proximity the author perceives between religious substrata and profound evil, Dagger shows us the hierarchy that presides over the group that convenes the abyssal ceremonies: at the top is God, the god of the Abyss, who dominates and commands. Immediately below are the magnificent executioners, followed by the light-heavy executioners. Finally, the pistolocos appear. Murder is a career that is pursued over years and through the demonstration of skill and loyalty. Initially, the candidates are chosen by those already in the hierarchy and must be co-opted and trained by an executioner who becomes their master. The goal is to give readers a profound and profound understanding of this universe of death. The protagonist narrator, in a kind of praise, tells us: “Abyss, the Insatiable, unhinged deity, aspires to be One, One, Alone, Alone, Same, Same and Eternal-Eternal, in past, present and future, praised forever as the pimp of Implacable Death in all its folds and displays…” (p. 168).

From this enthronement of evil, the author engages in dialogue with a society that seems to have established this omnipresent evil in its corridors and ways of life. The god who presides over death can be embodied in any of the rulers who, in this 21st century, consider themselves masters of life and death, and who, from their bloody blindness, decide the fate of entire peoples because they claim to be masters of life and death. Read from these confrontations, the novel can even be understood as a parable of the world unfolding before our eyes and our lives. The novel shows the configuration of an age of terror in which horrors are established amidst the most astonishing impunity: Abismo reigns without any force to oppose it.

The executioner, who tells us his stories and doubts, defines himself: I was the evil of evil… Contemplating his dagger (all who handle weapons love them in an erotic relationship), he goes back in time and recovers what could be the history of a certain type of weapon, which is, ultimately, a history of human cruelty. In his overflowing words, Mercy approaches the different forms of killing, listing above all the “weapons that commune with the hand”: daggers, axes, knives… finally stopping at the guillotine, that hell of 1789 during the French Revolution. The evocations do not end here; the Bloody Countess is also summoned to the page… that woman between legend and reality who devoured the blood of so many young girls whose throats had to be cut before they bled.

In parallel with this follow-up to the destructive power, the narrator tells us how he chooses and trains a young executioner who must succeed him in his duties, in his obedience to the god of death and blood. It is necessary to increase the number of executioners because a new age of terror has been established in the world, and it is clear that we live in it. Restrepo's novel is the representation of this new terror of the 21st century: Gaza, the center of a genocide blessed by all; the migrations resulting from the expulsion from one place to another of the masses besieged by hunger... Any age of terror demands the almost infinite multiplication of its murderers; this is what the novel works towards.

But the narrative presents a turning point, which we learn about precisely at the moment the action that calls us together begins. Dagger wants to escape his fate: by chance, on a street corner, he discovers love, and that love is the brake on the rampage of death. He falls in love with the granddaughter of the one who is to be his next victim. The executioner, already haunted by doubts, begins tracking his potential victim, and all paths lead him to the young woman with whom he has fallen in love. The narrative then poses a dilemma: can love save us socially from the demands of the god Abyss? Can love stop the eternal chain of murder and hatred, genocide, or mass murder?

We must answer yes. Mercy Dagger, the magnificent executioner, decides not to kill. He saves the victim because his heart has been pierced by another kind of dagger : the dagger of love, immaterial but no less powerful. This new "dagger" stops the forces of evil and establishes new possibilities for life in other directions. In this new path for Mercy, the persistent memory of her blind grandmother and the care she received from her in her early years may play a role. The executioner is aware that his resistance to Abismo's orders will cost him his life, but he surrenders to love. He gives his life in sacrifice for the love he has discovered and felt. I Am the Dagger and I Am the Wound is a novel that invites rebellion against the god of weapons, against the god of omnivorous power, against all those who claim to own human life and death.

Underlying the parable of this work is an invitation to resist weapons, evil, terror... the god who seeks to immobilize consciences in order to establish his kingdom.