The Bosses and Their Employees
A translation and adaptation of a Hernán Casciari story about work, dreams, and time.
At this point, I’ve translated so many of the Argentine writer Hernán Casciari’s stories for free on Substack that there’s no point in linking to them anymore. Search his name in my Archive and you’ll find at least seven.
I admire Casciari for many reasons. One of them is that he’s countercultural and yet so incredibly popular throughout the Spanish-speaking world for writing anecdotally about feelings and experiences we all share. The man is a self-publishing anarchist who doesn’t do endorsements or include ads in his popular magazine. Yet, he can tell short stories on the radio, TV, and in theaters that bring together millions. Just last year, I was accepted into one of his Anecdote Workshops and was excited to find in our small group of obsessive readers not just Argentinians and Americans but Europeans, Mexicans, Colombians, and even a Brazilian or two.
Casciari published “The Bosses and the Employees” on his blog in June 2012 and then adapted it for his weekly radio column in March 2017. Mine is not a word-for-word translation of either piece but an adaptation of both. The author himself encourages this practice; none of his works are copyrighted, and he welcomes recreations as long as he’s credited. (Following in his footsteps, I published Big Head on the Block under a Creative Commons license.)
On Thursday, for my Attic Club, I will write about why I chose this piece and what I’ve been going through internally as a writer who daylights as something else and, thus, frequently wonders whether he’s really a writer or just an amateur scribbler.
Without further ado, here goes.
“So you’re Chiri’s boss,” my daughter, Nina, asked me the other night before bed.
“No,” I said, sliding the book I’d just read her back in its place on the shelf.
“Okay,” she said, thinking, as I sat beside her on the mattress. “So, then, he’s your boss?”
“No,” I responded. “We make the magazine together. Nobody’s the boss.”
“Ahh,” she said, but I could tell she was unsatisfied with my response. “So when you disagree, who gets to be right?” she asked.
Hmm. I tried hard to remember an instance when my partner and I weren’t on the same page about something, but nothing came to mind. “We always agree,” I said, surprised by the realization. “Now, go to sleep.”
Nina was quiet for a moment. I got up to leave, thinking she’d given up. “I love you,” I said before flicking off the light.
“But that doesn’t make sense,” she said as the room went dark. “If one of you screws up, who gets mad? At school, they taught us there’s always a boss who gets mad.”
“No one, sweetie,” I said. “Chiri and I don’t get mad at each other. We’re friends. Sweet dreams.” And I closed the door before she could say another word.
When my head hit the pillow that night, the conversation must’ve still been rattling around inside my brain because I dreamed of the memory of a strange meeting I’d long forgotten. It happened in May of 1982 when I was 11 years old.
Chiri, also 11 at the time, was over the house, and we were transcribing interviews we’d done the day before for an issue of our childhood magazine, Las Cloacas (“The Latrine”), which we made ourselves and sold at school. Our friends, who were the only people who read it, didn’t care much for the stories I wrote, but they laughed at the drawings. For this issue, we interviewed our parent’s neighbors about Margaret Thatcher. Chiri drew the cover: a goofy caricature of the British prime minister that we were sure would make us enough money to buy alfajores for a week.
The magazine was 12 pages long, typed up with the brand-new Lexicon 80 typewriter my dad, Roberto, brought home from work the week before. Before that, we made it on Chiri’s mom’s portable Olivetti. But the new typewriter had a wider carriage, so we could print landscape. It made the job way easier.
In my dream, I had no concept of the future. That’s to say, I had no recollection of being a grown man who traveled back in time. For the duration of it, I really was that chubby little boy whose only worries in life were the ones directly in front of him.
Chiri and I had just gotten into a dispute over something that—to me—seemed cut and dry. I was feeling heated about it. For the piece on Thatcher, I thought the questions from the interviewer (me) should be typed in black ink and the responses from the neighbors in red. The different colors would help the reader follow along more easily. But Chiri insisted that doing so was a waste of time since we’d have to photocopy the original anyway. And in the photocopies, the red would become black. I explained to him that the red would actually look gray, so the effect would be the same. But he said no, grabbed the sheets from my hand, and stormed off to Guinot’s printshop to prove his point.
I know that Chiri assumed the real reason I insisted on printing the story in two colors was to show off. His mother’s typewriter could only take black ink. And he was right! I’ve always been annoyed by how good my friend is at detecting my motives. I felt sure that, to prove his point, he would ask Guinot to make the photocopies with a lot of contrast so that you could barely see the red (or gray, rather) and that he was speeding back to the house on his bicycle with the dumb face he puts on whenever he’s right.
That’s what I thought about when Chiri floated into the bedroom with the photocopies in his hand. His face was different than I’d expected. Instead of grinning, he was pallid. The blood was gone from his cheeks, as if he’d just seen a ghost.
“There are two guys outside asking to speak with us,” he said coldly.
“What guys?” I asked, perplexed. “The neighbors?”
“No, two guys,” he said, and his face still didn’t move. “When I got back, they were about to ring the bell. They said they’re our employees and that they need us to approve something if we want them to leave.”
“They want money?” I asked, assuming they were beggars, clever ones.
“No, no,” Chiri said. “One of the guys looks exactly like my Tio Luís.”
“The skinny one with glasses?” I asked.
Chiri nodded. “The other looks like your Abuelo Marcos but younger,” he said. “They’re waiting for us on the sidewalk.”
I was curious, so I walked downstairs with him. And, I’ll be honest, I was as nervous as I was eager. Though Chiri still had the photocopies in his hand—he hadn’t even shown me yet—he was shaking. That worried me more than anything else. Once we got to the front door, I made out the guys through the glass, and I knew immediately what Chiri was too spooked to say out loud.
“It’s us,” I said.
He nodded without returning my gaze.
“It’s us, but old,” I said. Chiri exhaled after I’d verified what he couldn’t say for fear of losing his mind.
“When did you realize it?” I asked him.
“As soon as they spoke to me,” he said. “I was riding back, and I saw them on 32nd Street. The chubby one recognized me instantly and elbowed the skinny one. I couldn’t tell who they were from far away. But as soon as they whistled to me, I realized it. They talk just like us.”
I marveled at our future selves. “Your hair’s gray, and you're wearing women’s glasses,” I said.
“And you’re so fat,” he said. “And you’re carrying a purse.”
“It’s not a purse,” I protested instinctually. “It’s a satchel.” Chiri rolled his eyes.
The older guys heard the commotion and turned to face the glass door. The chubby one put up his hand and summoned us out to the sidewalk. We opened the door slowly and ambled down to where they were. For a minute, all four of us stood there silently staring at each other until the skinny older one broke the silence.
“You already had boobs at 11,” he said, pointing to my chest. They both started cracking up.
My face turned red. When I turned my back to them, I saw Chiri laughing, too, which made me furious. Then, the skinny one pulled a black rectangle from his pocket and looked at the time.
“Boludo, we’ve gotta get moving,” he said. “The printer’s closing in two hours.”
The chubby one came over to me, put his hand on my shoulder, and asked if my parents or sister were home. I nodded no. “Alright, then let’s go inside,” he said. “That’ll be better for talking. We’ve got a real big problem.”
I assented, and they both pushed past me up the stairs, walking through the hallways and past the bedrooms without ever peering inside to double-check where they were going. When they got to the kitchen, the skinny one opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of milk. The chubby one flung open a cabinet and grabbed a can of Nesquik and a glass for each of us. From a drawer, he grabbed a big spoon and poured four scoops into each cup except his own, which got six scoops, and then he mixed them up. Chiri and I watched on without saying anything.
The skinny one took a sip, closed his eyes, and smiled.
“Ahhh,” he said, licking the insides of his mouth with his tongue. “The chocolate milk from before was a million times better!”
The chubby one downed his serving in a gulp and wiped his mouth with the tablecloth. Right then, I knew it for certain: that guy was me.
“This is the problem,” the skinny one said, suddenly becoming very serious. “We’re publishing the seventh issue of Orsai Magazine tomorrow, and there’s something we can’t agree on.”
“What kind of magazine is it?” I asked.
“The kind with stories and commentaries,” the chubby one said. “Cartoons and poems, too,” added his colleague.
Chiri and I looked at each other and smiled. A week before, we’d had a very serious conversation in the schoolyard about our futures and promised each other that, whatever else happened, we’d always make magazines together.
“You really work for a magazine?” asked Chiri. “Do you write or draw? Or both?”
“We run it,” the chubby one said firmly. “I’m the managing editor, and he’s the editor-in-chief.”
“So, neither of you guys draw?” I asked. Sensing my worry and disappointment, they responded in unison. “No, but we run it!”
“We find the writers, the reporters, the cartoonists,” the chubby one said. “We pick the topics and how we want it to look, hire the people that do the rest for us. You should be happy!”
“But are you happy?” I asked, still worried.
“Of course, we’re happy, you little turd,” the skinny one said. But I could tell he didn’t mean it as an insult. “We’re doing the same thing we did when we were your age.”
And then the skinny one signaled for the purse. As the chubby one pulled out the papers, he pulled them from his hand. You could tell they’d been arguing.
“Look,” he said. “Right here is the eighth issue.” He pulled out three sheets from the manuscript. “The first problem is the cover. For the last three issues, we’ve used graphic covers, and now he suddenly wants to use a photograph. I told him that won’t work—people like cartoons, they like art. But he won’t have it.”
“People love pictures!” the chubby one yelled, pointing to the lens on the back of his black rectangle. “They take them all the time.”
“But this picture is stupid,” the skinny one yelled. “And we already paid the designer.”
“What’s the other issue?” I asked them.
“The word count,” the skinny one said. “The story he wrote on Page 3 is too long, and instead of cutting it shorter, he wants to finish it on Page 125.”
The two devolved into arguing. Then the chubby one stopped, caught his breath, and glanced at us, standing there quietly. The skinny one turned to address us.
“You have to decide,” he said matter-of-factly. “What should we do?”
“Why do we need to decide?” I asked. The chubby one raised his eyebrows. He looked surprised.
“Don’t you know?” he said. “You’re the bosses. We work for you.”
Chiri and I stood there silent. “What do you mean?” Chiri asked.
“I mean that we started writing this stupid magazine to fulfill a promise we made to you,” the chubby one said. “You think we’re here by accident? Just last week, didn’t you have a conversation about this exact thing?”
“In the schoolyard,” clarified the skinny one. “During recess. Do you remember? You promised each other something.”
“Yes,” we admitted, our faces turning pale again.
“Do you remember what?” the chubby one asked.
“Yes,” we said.
“Was it that you were going to be rich?” he asked. “Or that you were going to be famous?” added the skinny one.
“No, no,” we said. I swallowed hard. “We promised that even when we grow up, we’d stay best friends.”
“And what else?” asked the chubby one.
“That we’d make a magazine,” said Chiri.
Tiny droplets of water welled in all eight of our eyes. It was like we’d just seen Bambi’s mother die or Argentina win the World Cup on penalties.
“We came to tell you everything’s fine,” said the skinny one, drying his cheeks with his index finger. “What’s coming will be good. Because, to us, that silly promise you made at recess was an order.”
“You’re the real bosses,” said the chubby one. “You make the calls. We, the older ones, are your employees. So, what do you choose?”
“Use an artist for the cover,” I said. “You’ll save money, and I hate photos.” The chubby one huffed his displeasure. “Fine,” he said.
“And let the story go long,” Chiri added. Now the skinny one rubbed the wrinkles on his forehead.
“Okay,” he said, annoyed. “The problem is that the story is one of the worst he’s ever written. There’s no plot or climax. I told him to change it. But he keeps making it longer to spite me.” They grumbled at each other again.
“Do you want to know how it ends?” the skinny one asked.
“How?” I said.
And right then, I woke up.
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