Claudia Ulloa Donoso / Swimming Pool

In Piscina

by Sampieri Giacomo

Swimming Pool

by Claudia Ulloa Donoso

Translation by Lily Meyer

Claudia Ulloa Donoso / Piscina

There are more swimming pools in France than in any other European country. Almost 100 people drown in French pools every year.

We go to the pool in order not to exist.

I go when I’m sick of everything, when the weight of my own body exhausts me, when I can’t stand my own steps on the sidewalk.

In the water, I’m weightless. I float like a corpse, and when I get out, I’m ready to be alive. 

Claudia Ulloa Donoso / Eloísa

Claudia Ulloa Donoso

Eloísa

Translated by Lily Meyer


Claudia Ulloa Donoso / Eloísa (De otros mundos)

Before Eloísa, I was lonely and insecure, and at the start of our relationship it was hard for me to accept the men in her life. Now, I understand how good the situation is for us both.

Eloísa and I met online. After we exchanged messages for a while, she suggested that we meet in person, and she seduced me with her compliments, her silver tongue. What a quiet man like me needs, it turns out, is a woman who can talk. 

Eloísa quickly got into the habit of staying at my house. At first she just slept over, but before long her visits were so frequent it was as if we were living together. Our daily routines strengthened my confidence that she would stay. Slowly I believed in her enough to observe her, and then I noticed her moving my things. 

Lily Meyer / Translator's Note: Claudia Ulloa Donoso

Claudia Ulloa Donoso

Translator's Note: Claudia Ulloa Donoso

by Lily Meyer

Lily Meyer / Sobre Claudia Ulloa Donoso

The title story in Peruvian writer Claudia Ulloa Donoso’s collection Pajarito starts with a description of the narrator’s cat. He’s seven kilos, furry, antisocial. He has seven lives in Peru and nine in Norway, where he lost at least one by wandering outside in the polar winter. There are pictures of him on the author’s blog, but that’s not mentioned in the story. It’s just true.