Deformities

If I had children, maybe I would’ve done the same as our parents. Encourage creativity and interests to foster talent. Tae-Kwon-Do three times a week, tennis every morning. Soccer on Saturdays, swimming on Sundays at 6 am. Drawing and painting on Wednesdays, guitar practice on Mondays and Thursdays. Piano practice every other day, 6pm chess matches. An hour of reading and literary analysis every day, and more. Much more. 

I said “our parents” because I had a brother, and what’s more, we were twins. We were together for twelve years before the deformities came and took him away. 

For years after his deformities and death, for decades, I searched for some kind of logical explanation to latch onto. How much can a body be altered? Why him? We were identical—why not both of us? Hadn’t we come into the world to always be in it together? To always be together? What saved me? A genetic, molecular, or cellular difference?

What if I was the doomed one all along?

I turned to my crafts for answers. Writing. Drawing. Art—figurative and abstract. For years I worked, questioned, and experimented. Desperately and tirelessly. Searching didn’t answer my questions, but it was the spark that eventually made The Self-Portraits. I drew us, my brother and I, frozen in time at twelve years old. Two blond, perfect children. Marito and I, faces on white paper. Identical at first, but then, not as much. One ordinary and the other, line by line, picture by picture, more and more altered. More deformed and disfigured. 

That exhibition launched my art career. Until then my achievements boiled down to a few group exhibitions and municipal awards. Broke and irrelevant, I thought mediocre art would be my lot in life. But The Self-Portraits changed all that. It was the work that defined my career. “A masterpiece,” according to the gallery owner and curator, Rainieri. In the brochure we provided on its opening night he wrote: “What do those children hide? Why do they question us? Before them, we are forced to reflect on twin identities, on their limitations and intersections. The shared pain and the endless process of mourning. The depth of the wounds and trauma family creates.”

The Self-Portraits: twelve hyper realistic paintings. Titled #1, #4, #7, #10, #11, #13, #14, #15, #16, #19, #21 and #22—one for each year of life with my brother. 55 X 66 cm. Drawn with pencil on 300-gram white canson paper. Exhibited within a small but important contemporary art gallery with white walls, neat and very well lit. Trees and strange plants teemed within its lively inner courtyard.  For years Rainieri and I admired it together in almost complete silence, mornings, afternoons, and evenings, drinking whatever was on hand. 

The Self-Portraits confirmed what some—not many, to be honest—had suspected for a while: I was more than a gimmicky artist. More than a shy, tormented guy who rarely spoke. More than just thin, hungry, and hopeless. It was the exhibition that cast me into the spotlight, that made my name big. The exhibition where I publicly and flagrantly displayed my brother’s deformities. That fast-tracked what had seemed inevitable for years: our disintegration. Art is a cruel wound. 

What would Marito be today, if he hadn’t become deformed? A star? The best? Exceptional? One of those people interviewed in newspapers and the TV? An entrepreneur, a visionary, or an illustrious leader of a corporation? My brother enjoyed all the extracurricular activities our parents signed us up for. He loved competition and rigor. Agendas and schedules. I hated those responsibilities—hated them with a passion. My brother’s fervor didn’t rub off on me. At soccer practice, he was the best. He dribbled the ball like it was glued to his shoes. He passed, triangulated, and made plays. He scored nicely with cold blood and precision. When it came to music, he mastered the more complex instrumental techniques. Guitar, violin, piano, and bandoneon—Marito stunned classmates and teachers with his passionate performances. Mozart, Chopin, Satie—my brother’s ability to musically charm a room was unparalleled. He used to play epic matches with the chess teacher that lasted for hours, provoking absurd bets from attendees. In martial arts he would often beat older opponents. His movements in each style were swift, powerful, and agile. He executed a perfect butterfly stroke in swimming. His tennis serve was not only powerful and precise, but elegant. Everything about my brother seemed natural, instinctual. I didn’t even try. The path of least resistance—that was my thing. 

My parents were worried; I saw it in their faces and heard it in their tone. “You lack order, Pedrito,” “If you just applied yourself, Pedrito” “Pay attention, son.” Their comments didn’t bother me. I listened and stayed silent; even then I knew how important that was. I knew very well what my talent was. I’d discovered it when I was young, and neither my parents nor Marito suspected a thing. Of all the subjects, the only one that attracted my interest was Art, but not for the usual reasons. I wasn’t interested in the right way to use a pencil, human bodily proportions, the Mona Lisa’s secrets, or Van Gogh’s experiments. Those things didn’t worry me until I entered the Academy. During my childhood, the pursuit was different. An internal and discreet pursuit. 

What was my secret?

Imagining possibilities was my greatest skill. It still is. In fact, it’s what I do for a living. When we were kids and things in my family were still normal, before deformities and disintegrations, I enjoyed climbing onto the roof of the house, lying on my back on the orange tiles, resting my head on my arms, staring at the sky, and silently watching and observing. For hours, just imagining. 

Nothing in the world moves if I don’t see it. Colors aren’t the same to everyone.  Shapes could be more like illusions—is my body an illusion? Is life a movie? Am I the main character? Or am I a side character? If I had a choice, would I want to live a tragedy or comedy? Something’s flying overhead—a UFO? Has there ever been a two-headed cat? Who are the people talking at the end of “I Am The Walrus”?—Whose bodies do they belong to and are they all dead? Where did they bury Paul? Parallel timelines are closer than we think, reachable, but impossible to enter. So, somewhere on this planet—far away—someone identical to me exists, lives and breathes. They’re not my brother. They could be a shoplifter or an altar boy. If we met coincidentally, would we fight to the death or vanish? Will the victor remember his own past or inherit the defeater’s memories? What would happen to Marito? I don’t think I am who I think I am. I think I’m not who they say I am. The madman is unconscious of his condition. I know I’m not crazy now, but what about in the future? Will I become insane, or will I be the only sane one in this insane place?

Will I become deformed?

Questions like these wandered around my head day and night, hour after hour. Meanwhile, teachers fought hard to teach me boring subjects: math, grammar, logical reasoning, chemical reactions, biological theories, history. Subjects that made no sense because they were real and, therefore, banal. Marito, on the other hand, crushed it, and they loved him. They suggested I try concentration and discipline. “Focus your efforts!” “Change your hobbies!” “Grow up, Pedrito. Just grow up!” I’ve heard that advice my whole life. I hear it even now, every time I repeat it in my mind: Yes, Pedrito. It’s time—once and for all, grow up! When adults scolded me, I didn’t respond. I never argued with teachers or tutors. Why waste energy? Why explain myself to people who don’t want to understand? No, answers and certainty were never important to me. What was important then, and now, is the ability to ask the most improbable question, to open space for the imagination’s infinite possibilities. 

Here’s a memory I have: my parents, Marito, and I in a field, under an immense and starry night. A campfire burns behind us, barely illuminating our figures. There are other people too, a little farther away, all standing around the same fire. Wine glasses are in mom and dad’s hands. They are still young and smiling. My father looks at me and says: “Come here Pedrito and take a closer look.” I obey. I approach and bring my left eye to the telescope eyepiece. Then, I focus and see it: Halley. A little far-off marble of light millions of kilometers away—and also here, just a few centimeters away. She floats. Delicate, insignificant, and distant. Tiny and marble-sized; I could hold her in my hand. I look away and step back. Then I turn to you, opening my mouth. “Is that everything, Marito?” I ask, but you don’t answer. Silence. 

We’d left the house hours before, during daylight. We climbed into the white van and began the trip, this adventure. All together, a family united. Dad drove and mom entertained us with songs and games: I spy, I spy…What do you spy? A red beetle, a plane, a man wearing a hat, a black cow, a house without a roof, a fruit vendor, and a truck full of pigs. 

We zoomed away from the city. Away from its flickering lights, gray traffic, and February breeze. We arrived at the wilderness’ aridity and a dirt road. To the kingdom of plants and insects: nature. Us and the other families. Other fathers, mothers, and brothers. Marito and I were the only twins. We set up camps, lit fires, and roasted marshmallows. Then night came. My father set up the telescope, calculated and aimed. “Come here, Pedrito,” he said to me. “Take a look.” I obeyed and walked over, bringing my eye to the telescope eyepiece to see Halley, so close and so far away. Her slipstream of light, velocity, and fire. A stray incandescent stone that I could grasp in my hand, I thought. I looked away and stepped back, turning my head to look at you. I opened my mouth and spoke—what did I ask?

Imagine a shadow identical to yours. A duplicate of your fears and secrets. Evidence of your relative existence. Imagine something that reminds you every second that you aren’t unique in this world. That’s a twin. 

Marito, I keep your face from that night in 1986 deep in my memories. Your barely lit contours, your two hollowed, black eyes. Our identical profiles; facing each other, under the blanket of the universe, under Halley’s trail. Maybe, dear brother, the purpose of your fleeting passage through life was to leave me with that image. To leave me with your gaze from that night as the last piece of evidence that at one point we were a family—once—long before your distortion. What do you do when life breaks? What do you do when your body is altered? What do you do after tragedy? I’ve borne your bad luck all these years. I’ve kept silent and felt like a victim, denying your name and using your death for my gain. I’ve been a pathetic human—and I’ve missed you. Goddammit, I’ve missed you, Goddammit! 

I’ve missed you all these years to the point where my skin bristles and my face turns red. To the point where I want to rip it all off and escape this body, take flight into an elliptical orbit, overtake the sun, and travel away from the planets. Be in retrograde, a tiny slipstream in the universe. Be a stray and incandescent stone; incomplete and eternally searching, condemned to travel 60 kilometers a second. Be the comet suspended over us on that starry night, with the telescopes beside us, our eyes in the scopes, distant barks, fire at our backs, mom and dad in each other’s arms, together and happy. Glasses of wine in their hands, the deformities still unthinkable. To have life, still intact.

Now at forty-one, I know why Mom and Dad subjected us to all those extracurricular activities. There’s no reason to blame them. They lived up to their generation’s stereotype, they wanted to be the picture-perfect family. The truth is that they married too young and didn’t know what to do with us. The truth is—also—that they expected one of us but got two. Period. End of discussion. She was seventeen, and he was twenty-two. They were kids—a couple of amateurs. Her last name was her most valuable asset, and his was all those strange trips, partners, and businesses. 

My mother belonged to the second generation—that is, she was the daughter of Jews who arrived in Bolivia after the post-World War II exodus. My father…well he was also Jewish…or at least that’s what we were led to believe, until the day he disappeared. 

Something’s not right about my parents’ situation. Something that escapes me that I can only describe as a hiccup, a wrinkle. Here’s the real question: How did my father—an almost illiterate boy who moved whatever goods were put in front of him—manage to marry my mother, the daughter of Dieter Grund, “Don Dieter Grund” AKA “The Great Lord Dieter Grund” AKA “the Legend Dieter Grund”? That was the real mystery. 

Allow me to explain: my grandfather, Dieter Grund, was a colossal man. Dazzling and inescapable, both in business and in physical appearance. He looked like a ball that someone had dressed in baggy pants, a short-sleeved shirt and multicolored suspenders. He had a hoarse voice, a theatrical laugh, and a pair of stout and obese hands that were covered in callouses and hair. Sweaty and rough, long fingers, greasy palms, dry fingernails—those were my grandfather’s enormous hands alright. 

Dieter Grund was a successful Sagárnaga merchant and a founding member of the Community Club. A pillar, an example, and a man worth remembering. He arrived in Bolivia in 1946, after wandering through Europe for months and walking from Poland to occupied Germany. From there, he went to Spain and Brazil, then finally arrived in La Paz, where he built up courage and connections. A few years later, he was already the brand-new owner of a store selling carpets, then jewelry, then fabrics, then many other things. 

But Dieter Grund was also an allegory, an invention, some hearsay. A heroic figure born long before his arrival in this country, which traveled with him from that distant continent. A myth that crossed valleys, snow-covered mountains, bombed cities, and rough seas. All great fiction is like this: free untamable wind, fierce colt, and feline. According to the legend, passed down orally, and not credible at all, the “Great Dieter Grund” had killed three German soldiers. That’s right: my grandfather was a Nazi killer. A hero, the people’s vigilante—I never heard him say a word about it. 

He never bragged about it, and nobody in the family ever brought it up in front of him. We didn’t even discuss it among ourselves. That story didn’t belong to us. It was the town’s anecdote. We might call it a folktale. I only dared to ask him about it once, and his answer was as terse as his reasoning: “The past is something to be forgotten,” he told me with his big voice of a one-man planet. I didn’t press him, obviously, but the stories were there, always around us and constantly spreading. None of them the same. 

All those versions and adaptations were subject to the imaginative capacities of their different storytellers. They were told by boys at school, scouts camping at night, customers passing through his store, guys wanting to impress some girls and make it to second base. My grandfather Dieter. “Big Dieter.” “Giant Dieter.” A lot of people owe too much to the myth of Dieter Grund. 

Marito and I didn’t. We never confirmed or denied its truth. If someone asked us about it, we shrugged our shoulders and stayed silent. We weren’t accomplices; we just didn’t fold to the masses. We stayed that course in parallel, without taking advantage of it. There was—I have to admit—something strange about the stories. A strange and unusual consistency. By that I mean their endings. 

Like I said, the different versions were unlimited and infinite. Everyone had their own spin on it. Some had slit throats, others referred to machine gun shots, chases, torture, amputation, blowjobs, and an endless list of etceteras. But the ending was always the same. In every version, the ending always went like this: after killing the soldiers, a triple murder, my grandfather Dieter Grund—“Giant Dieter Grund”—observed the lifeless bodies of his enemies. Silently and respectfully, he contemplated his handiwork. Then he took their knapsacks —the dead German guys’—and went through them. He ate the food rations, read girlfriends’ letters and superior officers’ orders. He looked at their photographs and personal papers. 

Then, once he was satisfied, he lay back on the grass and admired the stars. He feasted his eyes on the radiant light of the newly arrived moon as it shone over Europe. A full and huge moon, free of irises, like a blind eye. A magnificent moon over the world, over men. And he came to a realization: he understood that every act on Earth was futile in comparison to the universe’s magnitude and transcendence. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you make a fable. 

What a load of bullshit. 

I imagine that this alleged feat lent an air of heroism and mysticism to this young newcomer to Bolivia who, at barely eighteen years old, without a penny in his pocket, ravenous, knew how to make his way. Personally, I don’t believe the stories. I’m sure that the man I remember, my grandfather, “The Great Dieter Grund,” “Giant Dieter Grund,” wasn’t capable of killing a human being. At least, not with his own hands. Not with those hands. Cheat or swindle him, sure. Maybe. Cheat, swindle, and con. But murder? No. I don’t think so. I don’t want to believe it. That man, Dieter Grund, was our grandfather. Our mother’s father, who named her Vivien when she was born.

Vivien. 

Vivien.

Vivien.

The simple act of reading her name, the harmony and delicacy with which the letters join together, the cadenced syllables’ intonation, the contrast between the first V and the final N. Everything in it—the name and the woman—was fragility. Complete fragility. 

Vivien Grund: my mother. Vivien Grund: a spoiled only child. Vivien Grund: unpredictable and indomitable teenager. Vivien Gund: underneath her father’s enormous shadow. In love with a boy of unknown background and wealth. Pregnant and married at seventeen. Mother of two blonde twins with blue eyes—my mother. A woman who cried in the quiet of her room when she got home each night, Vivien Grund. With the grotesque deformity and death of her son imprinted in her memory and carried on her back, Vivien Grund. With the unusual and sudden disappearance of her husband, Vivien Grund. Betrayed by my self-portraits, Vivien Grund. 

Memory’s a strange thing. It insists on leaving us with the images of people as we saw them in the last years of their life. That’s why a broken woman appears in front of me when I close my eyes and imagine my mother’s face. The one who’d already tasted tragedy and grief. The one who saw nothing but flames everywhere and nowhere to escape to in this world. The one who suffered from constant nightmares where huge waves devoured and drowned her. I imagine the face of a woman dressed in black who buried her twelve-year old son, Marito, inside a small hole in the earth. She and I in the cemetery, and above us an incessant summer rain. My father was already gone, had disappeared, and we were there holding hands, with water droplets on our cheeks instead of tears and the terror of deformity alive and present in our thoughts. My mother and I, hand in hand and silent. We stood in front of the closed casket, a shiny chestnut, in which they had placed the formless thing, Marito, my brother. I imagine the face of a woman who for weeks, months, years, longed for the return of her husband. Or at least some truth, hint, or explanation. I imagine the woman who never understood that sometimes people who play with fire get burned and disappear. Or the other possibility: that some men just run when they confront horror. 

Maybe that’s what he did—escaped deformity. I’m not judging or blaming him. If Marito had been my son, I might’ve done the same. Yes, I imagine the cold, calm, and lifeless face of my mother, Vivien Grund. The woman who put an end to her pain in the most poetic way possible: with sleeping pills, without a note, lying naked on the living room sofa—and hugging one of my paintings. The most famous of them, the work that brought me recognition as an artist and to some of the biggest galleries. The work that broke her heart and sped up our family’s disintegration: Self Portrait #22. Yes, I played a part in my mother’s death. Art is a cruel wound. 

Of her—the woman I prefer to remember—I’m left only with photos. Printed photos showing a young Vivien. Faded and discolored photos. Taken with film and developed by anonymous eyes and hands, in photo studio dark rooms that no longer exist. Who, besides us, saw these? Who else has contemplated my mother’s face? Will anyone else remember her? Are there copies of these photographs in some corner of this city? Photos kept for years in a drawer, and then another, and another, like the one I have open beside me. The photo I see you in, mother, shows you young and whole, with a cigarette in your mouth and wearing white pajamas, you are half-reclined on a brown armchair. Your diaphanous eyes look at the camera as it captures your face. You’re so young—nothing has happened to you yet, your body leaning on a golden statue in another photo. You’re wearing an overcoat at night and your teeth gleam. A black scarf covers your neck, and you are in Germany. You’re happy. Another photo has you, a pen in your right hand, seated in front of a small wooden table inside an unrecognizable apartment. Your hair is sort of short, orange, and oblique. Your long, long, long nose. Some dark liquid stains your right cheek. You are looking at someone, smiling at them. You’re kind. Another photo captures you with your back turned. You’re far away—is that actually you, mom? Yes, it’s you. Now you’re standing on a snow-covered slope. You’re wearing a red jacket and looking at something out of the frame, something the camera doesn’t catch. You’re alone.

These are the photographs of the woman Marito and I knew during our first twelve years of life, before everything changed, before the deformities and The Self Portraits, before the hysteria and disintegration. 

Mom: all this was just an excuse to say I loved you.

You never knew it, but Marito and I used to wait for you for hours, just to watch you come home and walk through the hallways. We listened to the sound of your attentive and determined footsteps, the hollow tap of your heels. We studied the shapes of your slender, shiny legs beneath your pantyhose. You would leave your purse on the living room table, close the door, take off your blouse and throw it on the floor. Then you’d enter your room, close the door, and in there, do whatever it is women do when they’re alone. Your sobs echoed inside those four walls. Marito and I listened in hiding, alert and invisible. Once you grew quiet, we’d return to our games, to the world that belonged to us, to our fantasies. 

We were kamikazes in free fall, spies in pursuit, or assassins on the run. Supernatural investigators, soldiers in the trenches, or merciless marshals. Mounted knights, space strategists, or platoon commanders. Snipers on suicide missions, liberators of the oppressed, or quartered rebels. Robotechs vs. Zentraedis. Mazinger vs Superman. We were children and adults weren’t allowed in our world. That was very clear to us. It was our safe space. The hiding place we synchronized our thoughts. Our only constant way of uniting our emotions and souls to, at last, be one. Marito and I, a single entity. One body and being. Just like it should have been from the beginning but wasn’t. We were born two. Separate but homogenous, separate but twins. A mirror of one another. Identical reflections, until the day the glass broke.

That’s why I also suffered when the deformities started: because we were twins. I also transformed when the pain came, when that thing arrived and took my brother away. Something inside me shifted. Something that left me alive and my body intact, but broke my inner self. It polluted and corroded me. Something that made me into the twisted man I am today. In Marito’s case, it was his body that was disfigured. But in mine…

The first deformity happened on a night like any other, without warning or witness. I slept restlessly after having a bad dream. Every time I opened my eyes I had the feeling that time was standing still, that day wasn’t going to come. I looked out at the patio, towards the dark treetops. Nothing was moving outside the room. Nothing in the world seemed to be moving forward. I tried, again and again, to get comfortable enough to sleep, but couldn’t. In the brief moments of restless half-sleep, images of the future came to my mind: strange faces, untaken trips, and conversations in unknown languages. 

I woke up exhausted. I opened my eyes and lay still for a few minutes. Everything in me was wet. I couldn’t say what was bothering me. Was it just my head or my whole body? Was it just muscles and bones or something deeper within? I managed to sit up on the bed, and stretched my arms. I looked around, focusing my gaze. There were no more traces of night in the room. The light—an unforgettable amber glow—illuminated everything: carpet, dresser, books, notebooks, desks, bicycles, and curtains. I looked over at Marito. He slept barefoot in his single bed on the other side of the room. His mouth was open, and his breathing seemed labored. I saw myself in his face and body under the sheet. In his arms and hands—his hand? Something was wrong and confused in that hand, and then I saw it. From my bed, I saw and recognized it. Unmistakable and monstrous. Impossible to ignore. I saw it. 

“Marito?”

Every creative action, aesthetic result, or work of art is—must be, because it can’t be anything else—an alteration of reality. An abnormality. Something that makes no sense confined to its own time. Art is the creation of strangeness. Of the unnatural, odd, and original. I’m sure that morning, as I observed my brother’s hand, and what had happened to it, I had my first encounter with the essence of art. At that moment, I understood my place in the world. 

“Hmm?” he responded. 

If that’s so, who created the work of art Marito became?

Crediting God’s existence or cruelty wouldn’t make sense. But I’ll admit what happened to him and my family was almost supernatural. Art is also a magic trick, a sleight of hand. Maybe Marito was an anonymous masterpiece. A direct intervention of art in life, his human body as the medium. But there’s another possibility, one more somber and at the same time, one that makes more sense and is more appropriate considering my brother’s extraordinary talents: could he have been his own author and sculptor? Was he his own deformer?

“Hey, Marito, get up.” I said. He opened one eye and then the other. 

“Hey Pedrito,” he barely said, voice also deformed. 

“Marito, come on. Get up. Look.”

He made an effort and sat up. He did it too slowly, as if to emphasize the magnitude of his exhaustion. He yawned and stretched his arms. Then he blinked a few times, quickly. He raised his hand to say hello, and then he saw it there—still small, but present. Still shy but threatening. Still incomprehensible, but already unstoppable: the first deformity.