Seven Empty Houses

The seven stories and seven houses, as in Samanta Schweblin’s short story collection’s title, are likely linked, though on my first reading, I’m not inclined to make more than that surface connection.

Schweblin, an Argentinian writer, has written the finest story I’ve yet read about someone experiencing dementia. Her method puts us in a position of some confusion with shifting inner thoughts of the protagonist, and repetitions of various memories, notes and labels on various items, so it takes a bit of reading into the story to realize we are only getting a small taste of what the larger picture has to convey. The title of this story is “Breath from the Depths” and is the longest one in the collection.

The first story in the collection, “Out,” is about a mother and her young daughter and the mother’s propensity to take her daughter on wandering adventures into higher-income areas near their modest home. In one neighborhood at night, their car spins out of control and ends up in a muddy ditch. She revs the engine, tries to back and forth it out from its predicament, and finally backs it over a nicely manicured lawn in front of the horrified owner.

Out of pity, the owner invites them into the home for tea and to warm up and wait for car service to pick them back from the road. While the homeowner repairs to the kitchen to make tea, the mother runs upstairs, finds a trinket, stuffs it in her bag, heads back down, takes her daughter by the hand, manages to get the car in gear and on the road, and drives both of them safely back home. The next day, the woman turns up asking for the item, saying it is not worth much but has sentimental value. The mother of the girl insists she doesn’t have it, and the story ends, leaving us to wonder about the motivation of the mother and how it reflects on society’s class structure, the value of sentiment, and numerous other subtleties I am glossing over in this summation.