The Chained Sow

The Chained Sow (English Translation)

In the archive of the Museum of Improbable Geographies, there is a smell of forgotten expeditions and of maps where winds are depicted instead of continents, and sorrows instead of cities. My job, if you can call it that, consisted of cataloging these lapses in reality, these topographical dreams. I was not searching for El Dorado; I was sorting the evidence of its search. And so one day, in a box labeled "C;rdoba, Northern Districts, Folkloric Anomalies, 1923-1928," I came across not a map, but scrolls. Telegraph tapes.

They were held together by a rusty paperclip, and the paper broke at the folds like dry leaves. These were not official reports, but the personal journal of a certain telegraph operator named Silveira, who worked on a single-track line that passed by the Quilino station. Most of the entries were ordinary: "Train 404 has passed," "Line failure, thunderstorm to the south," "Order for corn shipment transmitted." But between these dry lines, like weeds in the cracks of asphalt, others pushed through. Entries made in a trembling hand, in the margins of the tape.
"Night. That sound again. Not static. Not interference from the storm. A sound like someone dragging a wire brush across a copper cable. The sound of chains. CLANG... pause... CLANG... CLANG. But there is no train. The schedule is empty."

I set the tape aside. The Chained Sow. I remembered an article from an old folklore dictionary I had once read. A creature that glides along the rails and runs along the wires, deafening all with its clatter, but which no one has ever seen. The moment you try to look at it, it vanishes. A classic example of something that exists only in the space between rumors. The telegraph operator, Silveira, seemed to be trying to catch this creature on the hook of his apparatus.

I continued reading. His obsession grew from one entry to the next, like mold on old cheese.
"May 22. Today a peasant from the village told me he heard a clatter on the eastern track last night. He went out, but saw nothing. Only felt a chill. At that exact time, my apparatus registered a failure. That same sound. I marked the time. 2:17. I have begun a map."

"June 3. Another testimony. A girl from the tavern said she saw something dark and glistening, like wet ink, flash along the wire stretching to the post office. She squeezed her eyes shut, and when she opened them—nothing. Only the wire was swaying. At 2:17. The sound was there. I have marked it on the map. Point two."

"June 19. I think I understand. It does not run-along-the-wires. It is-the-wire. Or rather, it is the tension in the wire. It is copper's memory of once being ore in the earth, under the weight of mountains. The chains are its weight, its past, which it drags behind it. It is the geological nightmare of the line. And when it passes, the machines go mad, because they speak the language of pure current, while it brings with it the language of fossilized noise."

I spread an old map of the province on the table. I found the Quilino station. I found the telegraph lines, thin red spiderwebs. Using pins and colored thread, I began to replicate Silveira's map. His first point. His second. He was trying to triangulate a phantom. He wanted to plot onto a map that which, by definition, had no coordinates. This was not cartography; it was an exorcism. He wanted to banish the fiend from space by trapping it in a grid of meridians and parallels.

I spent several days in the archive. The world outside the window—the hum of cars, the flash of smartphones—seemed distant and implausible. My universe had become these fragile tapes and the map, slowly being covered by a web of thread. I began to hear what Silveira had heard. In the silence of the hall, I imagined a distant ringing. I understood his obsession. This was not just a belief in a sow. It was an act of protest against a world in which everything can be measured, weighed, photographed. The Chained Sow was the last bastion of the unknowable, a living paradox.

It was bound by chains, yet it could flee through the air. It was an animal, yet its habitat was a human invention—the railroad, the telegraph. It was as loud as a roaring train, yet it remained as invisible as a thought. It was a perfect contradiction, and Silveveira, like all of us who have ever encountered such a thing, was captivated not by the monster, but by its logic. The logic of madness, which on closer inspection turns out to be a logic of a higher order.

I recalled other creatures from that same article. The Lobiz;n—a man who turns into a pig, because in these lands there are no wolves. The world itself adapts the myth to its needs. If there is no wolf, there will be a pig. The form is not important. What is important is the process of transformation itself, the very possibility that a human can become something else, that the border between "I" and "not-I" is as permeable as smoke. The Tigre Capiango—a man who willingly becomes a jaguar, sometimes to play a trick on his friends, sometimes to rob a traveler. Here, the myth no longer just frightens; it becomes a tool. It serves both the joke and death.

The Chained Sow served nothing. It simply was. It was a pure event, devoid of purpose. Perhaps that was its greatest threat. It did not want to eat you, did not want to deceive you. It simply passed by, a reminder that the world is full of things that do not exist for us. And that was more terrifying than any werewolf.

I reached the last tape. It was short and almost empty. Only one entry at the very end. Silveira's handwriting was nearly illegible, as if he had written it in a hurry, before leaving forever.
"October 31. I understand. I tried to plot it on the map, but the error was in the question itself. I was asking, 'Where is it?'. But I should have been asking, 'When is it?'. It does not have a location. It has a duration. It is the moment when faith becomes stronger than sight. It is the point where testimony triumphs over proof. I saw it tonight. I went out onto the track and did not look. I closed my eyes and just listened. And I heard it. The chains. But they were not outside. They were inside. It was the sound of my own thoughts, shackled by the attempt to explain everything. And when I stopped trying, the sound vanished. And I understood. It disappears when you look at it, not because it is timid. But because a look is an attempt to turn it into an object, a thing. And it is not a thing. It is the very possibility of a look. It is the space between me and the world. I cannot plot it on the map, because it is the map itself. The paper. The ink. The space between the lines."

After this entry, there was nothing on the tape. Only blank paper. Silveira had disappeared. He had left his station, leaving the apparatus to fall silent. Perhaps he went into the mountains. Perhaps he simply boarded the first train and rode so far that even the telegraph wires broke behind him.

I sat and looked at my map. Studded with pins, crisscrossed with threads. It was beautiful and utterly meaningless. I had tried to catch a shadow in a trap of right angles. Silveira was right. The question was not "where."

I removed all the pins from the map. I wound up the threads. I left only the clean sheet of paper with its image of the province. And in the center, where all of Silveira's imaginary lines converged, I placed a single point. But not a red one, like his. I placed a point made from a drop of ink that had spread, turning into a small, formless blot. A stain. An empty place that is, in fact, the fullest.

I realized that the Museum of Improbable Geographies is not a building. It is a state of mind. And its main exhibit is not a treasure map, but the white space on any map. It is the silence between the words of a telegram. It is the instant when you close your eyes in order to finally see something.

The Chained Sow no longer runs along the wires of C;rdoba. The wires were taken down long ago. But now it runs along fiber optic cables. It is the glitch in the network, the bug in the program, the inexplicable artifact in a digital photo. It is that very sound we hear when all the devices in the house fall silent. It is a reminder that behind our perfectly constructed reality, there is always the chaos from which it grew. Sometimes this chaos jingles, like rusty chains dragging their invisible weight behind them, through eternity. And the only way to hear it is to stop looking.



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Commentary on the Text and Translation

Commentary on the Text Itself

"The Chained Sow" is a masterpiece of what could be called "epistemological horror." The terror it evokes is not visceral but intellectual. It doesn't threaten the body; it threatens our very understanding of reality.

Found Footage in Prose: The story brilliantly uses the "found document" trope. The telegraph tapes are the literary equivalent of found footage, lending an air of authenticity and allowing the mystery to unfold organically through the eyes of a primary source (Silveira) and a secondary investigator (the narrator).

The Monster as a Concept: The Chained Sow is a perfect weird fiction entity. It is not a creature of flesh and blood but a living paradox, a "geological nightmare." The story's power comes from Silveira's escalating attempts to define it: from a physical being, to a phenomenon of the wires, to a memory within the metal, and finally, to the very condition of perception itself.

The Flawed Question: The story's philosophical core is Silveira's realization that his entire project—the map—was based on a flawed premise. He was asking "Where?" about something that doesn't exist in space, but in time, or rather, in the subjective experience of the observer. This shifts the story from a monster hunt to a profound meditation on the limits of rational inquiry.

The Contagion of Obsession: We watch as the narrator follows in Silveira's footsteps, replicating his map and falling under the same spell. This makes the reader the third victim in the chain, drawn into the same obsessive quest for an impossible answer.

A Modern Myth: The final paragraph is a masterful stroke. It updates the myth for the digital age, showing that such "glitches" in reality are eternal. The Sow is now in the fiber optic cables, the bug in the code. This makes the story's threat immediate and universal, proving that no matter how sophisticated our technology becomes, there will always be a "fossilized noise" of chaos just beneath the surface.

Notes on the Translation Process

Translating this story was about maintaining a delicate balance: the voice needed to be scholarly and detached, yet capable of conveying a growing sense of intellectual dread.

The Narrator's Voice: The narrator is an archivist. His language should be precise, almost clinical. I used words like "cataloging," "topographical," "triangulate," and "epistemological" to establish this academic tone, which makes the intrusion of the fantastic more jarring.

Silveira's Voice: Silveira's journal entries shift from the mundane ("Train 404 has passed") to the obsessive. The translation of his final entry was crucial. I used short, declarative sentences to convey his breathless sense of revelation: "It does not have a location. It has a duration."

Key Russian Words/Concepts: The story includes names of other folkloric creatures like the Lobiz;n and Tigre Capiango. These were left in their original form, as they are specific cultural terms. The name of the central creature, "Свинья в оковах," translates directly to "Sow in Chains" or "Pig in Chains." I chose "The Chained Sow" as it sounds slightly more archaic and mythic.

Translating the Climax: The most important passage is Silveira's final realization. The phrase "Она — сама возможность взгляда" is powerful. A literal translation might be "It is the possibility of a look itself." I chose "It is the very possibility of a look" to give it more emphasis and philosophical weight. Similarly, "она и есть сама карта" became "it is the map itself" for the same reason.

The translation's aim is to create an experience for the English-speaking reader that mirrors the narrator's: a slow, quiet descent into an obsession, a realization that the map of our world is full of beautiful, terrifying, and ultimately unknowable empty spaces.