The clamor of children grew more faint.

“It’s good you came to get me early. Mom always takes 
forever. Why don’t you pick me up every day?”

“I had today off. But I’d like to come and get you every day.”

The boy smiles and squeezes his father’s hand. They cross the street and walk in silence. The father grabs his son’s hand again. “Let’s cross, this is the dumbos’ side.”

“Why is it the dumbos’ side?”

“Because it’s where the sun hits. People who walk on the sunny side are dumbos.”

The boy laughs and repeats “the dumbos’ side…the dumbos,” as if he’d memorized a new lesson. Cars drive right past them, and his eyes follow the speeding colors.

“And the ones who go by car, Papa?”

“They’re like us, only they don’t need to walk.”

“But they’re on the sunny side.”

After a while the boy stops again and points at his left shoe. “Look, there’s a hole in it.”

His father examines the worn-out sole. “Why did they wear out so fast? I bet you weren’t taking care of them. You kids at school, with all your running around.”

“But I take them off at school when I play.”

“I’ve seen how you twist your foot around when you sit down. That’ll break ’em, I’ve told you a thousand times.”

“Mama has too.”

“You have to learn to take care of things.”

“If we had a car I bet my shoes wouldn’t fall apart. How come you don’t buy me a new pair?”

“How come? Because there aren’t any…there aren’t any shoes anywhere.” Worried, the boy lowers his gaze.

“It’s no big deal,” the father says, patting him on the head. “I’ll take them to the shoemaker and they’ll look like new again.”

The son stops and looks at his father gratefully, even admiringly. “Before Mama sees, so she won’t notice what happened.”

“Maybe, but we have to get going.” The father walks faster, not noticing how hard the boy works to keep up. They turn right. “What a great truck,” the father says, pointing toward the street. But his son has his eyes fixed on a store window.

“Papa, they have shoes. Will you buy all of them for me?”

The father is speechless, dazed by the shiny glass, the colorful ribbons, the lights—unlikely wonders on display. “Those shoes aren’t for sale,” he says finally. “It’s a museum.”

“Oh,” his son whispers, “a museum.” He glances back at the window overflowing with new shoes, so many he couldn’t even count them. “What a beautiful museum, Papa.”

Translation of “Zapatos,” first published in Words Without Borders, August 2009. Translation © Tobias Hecht. For more international fiction, see wordswithoutborders.org.

MY FATHER USED TO BE A SURGEON. He would often stand at the operating table for 10 hours at a time. He told us that everyone had an appendix in his belly, and that every day he had to remove at least 20 appendixes. His fastest time was 15 minutes.

We asked, “What do you do with it after cutting it off ?” “We throw it away,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “An appendix isn’t worth a damn. The lungs, the stomach, the heart, as well as the duodenum, the colon, the large intestine and whatnot all have their function. Do you know what the appendix is good for?”

My brother had an answer ready. “The appendix isn’t worth a damn,” he said.

My father burst out laughing, and our mother laughed, too. He went on, “That’s right. But if the appendix gets inflamed, the stomach will ache more and more, and if the appendix is perforated, it will cause peritonitis, and that can be fatal. You understand, fatal?”

My brother nodded. “It’ll kill you.”

I gasped. My father said, “So long as there’s no perforation, there’s no danger. There was a British surgeon…” As my father spoke, he lay back. He said that one day the British surgeon arrived on a small island, one with no hospital or doctor, not even a medical kit. His appendix became inflamed, and he lay underneath a palm tree, racked with pain. He knew that if treatment were delayed, he would soon die.

“The British surgeon had no choice but to operate on himself. He had two locals hold up a large mirror, and looking at himself, in this particular spot”—he pointed at the right side of his abdomen—“he made an incision, put his hand in, searched for the caecum—you need to locate the caecum in order to find the appendix…”

This incredible story left us dumbstruck. We looked at our father excitedly and asked him if he could operate on himself, just like the British surgeon.

Our father said, “That depends on the situation. If I was on that little island and my appendix was inflamed, to save my own life I would operate on myself, too.”

Father’s reply made the blood flow hot in our veins. We had always thought him to be the strongest and the most wonderful man, and his reply further confirmed this belief. It also gave us sufficient confidence to brag to other children: “Our dad operates on himself.” My brother would point at me, and add, “The two of us hold up a big mirror…”

FROM “APPENDIX,” TRANSLATION OF “LAN WEI,” FIRST PUBLISHED IN WORDS WITHOUT BORDERS MAY 2004. © ALLAN H. BARR. FOR THE REST OF THE STORY, SEE WWW.WORDSWITHOUTBORDERS.ORG .

SIX DAYS A WEEK, AT THE EXACT SAME TIME, the locomotive slices through the stillness of the landscape. Neither the trees nor the hills take note; only the cow watches the train go by. From his cab, the engineer waves a hand in greeting and the animal responds by swishing her tail back and forth, which also serves to fan her udders. They’ve been repeating this ritual for years, but the engineer knows that today is the last time. He’s retiring tomorrow. He’ll have time to tend the tiny patch of grass by the door of the house he’s finally paid off. He’ll be able to take vacations during low season, at discounted prices. He’ll no longer have to try to motivate himself every morning by repeating that work is a source of dignity, or to endure the presence of his assistant, a sullen, stingy man.

The engineer pulls out of the station, his head filled with endless plans—most of which are actually feasible. He pays no attention to the winding tunnels leading to a series of rundown suburbs or the buildings lining the tracks, crowned with neon-lit advertising. He isn’t taking pleasure in his final moments, or thinking that he’ll never again be in charge of the locomotive’s throttle. His mind wandering through a napfilled future, he drives past the urban sprawl and toward a landscape where various shades of green and the intermittent smell of manure prevail. When he sees the cow in the distance, he instinctively reduces his speed, noting his assistant’s look of disapproval. As he nears the cow it occurs to him that simply waving is not enough. So he slows down, his eye on the speedometer’s needle until it comes to rest at zero.

Slowly—trying not to jam his spine and set off his chronic back pain—he climbs down onto the tracks. With the faltering steps of a man unaccustomed to seeing his feet when he walks, he crosses the field toward the cow. The animal, having sensed the train halting, stops swishing her tail. She turns her head to get a better look at the engineer, who gingerly—as if rather than a cow she were a lion—reaches out a hand to pet the animal. The ruminant lets out a moo that scares off the swarm of flies normally clustered around her eyes. She glances at the train. Despite the distance she can make out the thin spiral of smoke trailing up from the sullen assistant’s cigarette. At the windows, passengers shout, demanding that the engineer get back immediately. They have no time to waste, they say. This is unacceptable. A more patient minority, however, looks on as a man who—judging by his uniform—must be the engineer hugs a cow for what seems quite some time and then, having finished, returns to the train with the satisfaction of one who has done his duty.

SERGI PÀMIES IS A CATALAN NOVELIST, JOURNALIST AND SCRIP TWRITER. HIS L’ÚLTIM LLIBRE DE SERGI PÁMIES WAS PUBLISHED IN 2000 BY QUADERNS CREMA. MORE OF HIS WORK MAY BE FOUND AT WWW.WORDSWITHOUTBORDERS.ORG

WHEN WE WERE KIDS, WE PLAYED ALL THE TIME. There were games for all times and all seasons, but it was April that set us loose in those evenings with lingering sunsets. When the church bells sounded the nighttime hours, our mothers or aunts called us home to go to sleep. And what sleep! We woke up the next morning in the exact same position as we went to bed, after almost 12 hours of nonstop slumber.

April was, is, a month full of good signs. But why are there now no more rows of swallows’ nests under the eaves of the houses and over the barn doors? And what became of the skylarks’ trills that used to fill the airy sky above the sweet hilltop where we released our kites in the afternoons?

St. Mark’s Day unfailingly brought the arrival of the swifts. But first, each year in early April, my grandfather had me write a postcard.

To: The Head of the Black Swifts, Alexandria, Egypt, Africa

Winter is over and there’s no more snow. The season is good and as always we have the roof and the attic for you. Sincerely, Mario and Grandpa Toni

I always ran like the wind to mail the postcard, not in the mailbox in the square but in the slot at the Royal Post Office. And our message really arrived down there — far, far away — because after 15 days or so the answer always came, a postcard with strange pictures and stamps, though I never did look to see what country it came from.

To: Grandpa Toni and Mario, Via Ortigara, Italia
Dear Friends, Winter was good down here, but now it’s really hot. We’ll arrive on the usual date. Arrivederci, The Head of the Black Swifts

On the evening of April 24, I would carefully watch the sky, intent on being the first to discover the advance patrol of swifts. When I saw the first two or three crease the sky above our house, I’d run to Grandpa to announce their arrival.

On those evenings, Grandpa was always sitting in his usual table at the Café Regina Margherita drinking a beer and smoking a Virginia. I’d yell out to him as I ran in, “They’re here! They’re here!” He’d let me catch my breath. “There,” I’d go on, “way up there! Look, Grandpa, how fast they fly!”

“Yes,” he’d reply. “They always keep their word. These guys will fly back down to Padua now to spread the word that the weather is good. Tomorrow all the others will be here.” And he would give me a piece of honey candy.

And truly, the next day, St. Mark’s Day, the sky would fill with their darting flights and their shrieks. At times I’d interrupt my game to stand with Grandpa and watch the swifts as they played theirs, not just similar but identical to the game we kids were playing in the market square. “Grandpa,” I asked once. “Do you think they learned it from us?”

“No,” he answered. “We learned it from them.”

FROM STAGIONI, PUBLISHED 2006 BY GIULIO EINAUDI EDITORE S.P.A., TURIN. TRANSLATION © 2007 BY GREGORY CONTI FOR WORDS WITHOUT BORDERS. FOR MORE BY RIGONI STERN, SEE www.WORDSWITHOUTBORDERS.ORG