Black Magic
[translated flash prose]
Take this seed. Plant it in an olla that has only been used to make coffee. Water it lightly Tuesdays and Fridays around midnight. It will grow into a plant with black flowers. Cut them with a man’s knife and grind them up in a new lava stone mortar. You will be left with a bit of paste resembling congealed blood. Drop this into a bottle of mezcal and let it brew for twenty-eight days. By then you will have a perfume. Sprinkle a few drops on the sheets each time you bring a woman to your bed. If she is the woman you are destined to love, the bed will fly through the window, sail to the shore and at the shore become a boat and disappear at sea. Nothing will be heard of the two of you again but why would you want to return to land if you’ve found true love. But if she’s not the one, the bed will become a wild mare, will leap through the window and run with you all night long. When you wake in the morning, nothing will matter to you. You’ll ask why you would want to meet your soulmate if a woman who isn’t yields such grand pleasure.
Magia Negra
Toma esta semilla. Plántala en una olla que se haya usado sólo para hacer café. Riégala un poco los martes y los viernes cuando esté por dar la medianoche. Crecerá una planta con flores negras. Córtalas con un cuchillo de hombre y muélelas en un molcajete nuevo. Te quedará una pastita como sangre coagulada. Ésta la vas a echar en un cuarto de mezcal y la vas a dejar ahí 28 días. Al cabo de éstos tendrás un perfume. Rocías unas gotitas en las sábanas de tu cama cada vez que lleves una mujer. Si es el amor que te toca, vas a ver que la cama sale volando por la ventana y se va a playa y en la playa se convierte en una barca y se pierde en el mar. Nunca se volverá a saber de ustedes, pero para qué quieren regresar a la tierra si ya encontraron el amor. Ahora que, si no es la mujer que te toca, la cama se convertirá en una yegua bronca, saltará por la ventana y se los llevará a correr toda la noche. Cuando despiertes en la mañana, ya no te importará nada. Dirás que para qué quieres encontrar a la mujer que te toca si con la que no te toca es tan grande el placer.
Translator Statement
Agustín Cadena intends to subtly connect “Black Magic” to indigenous magical beliefs of rural Mexico and does so with three words: olla, molcajete, and mezcal. I was able to keep olla, that unique receptacle, because, of course, it has only been used to make coffee: café de olla is as particular as café au lait. Generally speaking, alcohol needs no introduction, so mezcal should be fine. Molcajete was the problem. The sentence describes the grinding done in it, but a molcajete is not just a mortar. It’s a dark lava stone mortar used by country folk and when it’s new, the stone is as coarse as a concrete block. The rest of this wild flash story is all Agustín Cadena.
Patricia Dubrava teaches writing and literary translation at the University of Denver. She has two books of poems and one book of stories translated from Spanish. Her translations of Agustín Cadena’s stories have appeared most recently in Mexico City Lit, Exchanges, Asymptote, Numéro Cinq, and Cagibi. Her translation of a Cadena story was a finalist for Lunch Ticket’s Gabo Prize in 2017. Dubrava blogs at 
Agustín Cadena was born in Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo, México, and teaches at the University of Debrecen, Hungary. Essayist, fiction writer, poet and translator, Cadena has won national prizes for fiction and poetry. His books include collections of short fiction, essays, poetry, five novels, and eight young adult novels. His work has been translated into English, Italian, and Hungarian. Cadena blogs at 
