The Apprenticeship of the Beast: Orfa Alarcón’s Perra brava
If in Felipe Montes’
El enrabiado we observe the complete transformation of a subject into a werewolf, in the novel
Perra brava by Orfa Alarcón we find ourselves before what I will call a werewolf
bildungsroman. Right from the title we associate with the wolf in the form of the fierce dog. Given that both animal species belong to taxonomic subspecies of
canis lupus,
a first reference to the transformation that the protagonist will undergo may be found.
1 Of course, in El enrabiado the contagion of lycanthropy is also transmitted via the attack by rabid dogs rather than wolves strictly speaking. In this novel, contrary to what we observe in the previous one, the transformation will not be physical, but rather the form of the beast will be presented to us in the sense of the abovementioned “inner beast.”
As Carys Crossen argues, the contemporary figure of the werewolf does not necessarily require a bodily transformation, and, in general, these monsters tend to be more cunning and skillful in hiding their animalistic essence (2019: 126). Starting from this theoretical basis and from the concepts that the author develops about the werewolf no longer as a purely bestial and irrational figure but as thinking beings skilled at infiltrating society, I will consider Fernanda, the protagonist of Alarcón’s novel, as a manifestation of a contemporary were-woman. Although we will not see a physical transformation, the character will be presented as being traversed by the typical imaginary of contagion that will turn her into the beast, and we will see her progress toward a split mind, with a purely animal part.
In Alarcón’s novel, Fernanda, a middle-class girl who is unable to bear the sight of blood because the mere thought of it repulses her, will go through a downward spiral toward animalization, starting with her courtship by a drug-trafficking hitman boss (Alarcón 2010: 25). In the first chapter, her boyfriend Julio visits her after having committed a murder, and the reader is presented with the scene of the “contagion” that will lead to her conversion into a beast. If in El enrabiado we saw that the contagion was transmitted directly from the attack by a pack of dogs, in Perra brava the contagion of lycanthropy is passed on during an erotic game between Fernanda and her boyfriend. During the game, he bites her body and asks her to bite him too, effectively staging the transmission of the disease. However, more importantly, the contagion is presented explicitly through contact with blood. After their amorous encounter, Fernanda comments: “Amodorrada me levanté a orinar y lavarme los dientes. Entonces entendí las palabras de Julio: al tomar la pasta de dientes me descubrí frente al espejo con la cara llena de sangre. Los senos, las manos, la entrepierna” (Alarcón 2010: 12). The blood, Julio clarifies, belonged to the man he had just murdered.
This is the starting point from which Fernanda will begin to undergo her bestial transformation that will end with her becoming a ruthless killer. Julio, the agent of contagion, is presented to the reader already as a monster. He is a hitman boss associated with drug trafficking, and Fernanda fears and respects him. In that sense, Julio represents the essence of the unleashed monster: he attacks the foundations of society, just like Gonzalo transformed into an enrabiado, but the difference is that on this occasion the transmission of the lycanthropic disorder will take place, in addition to the metaphor of blood, through a series of learning scenarios that will lead Fernanda to develop her own inner beast until she surpasses her master. In the narrative, the hitman boss introduces Fernanda into a world of non-monogamous relationships and gang concerts that celebrate the culture of drug trafficking and violence, as well as forcing her to socialize with other hitmen. Fernanda, who at the beginning of the story imagines herself as a “Barbie de plástico, para cortarme sin que me saliera sangre” and who belongs to a well-off family in Monterrey, begins to get involved in violent and extreme situations that educate her in the process of becoming a monster (Alarcón 2010: 24). Her learning develops from the unwanted situations to which Julio subjects her and to which she at first resigns herself; she then gets used to them and finally ends up finding positives in them. The narrative shows Fernanda as if she were an animal that is educated with rewards and punishments. In another trait that highlights her animality, Fernanda reflects on how she looked for Julio by smelling his clothes when he punished her with his absence: “Llegaba a la casa a oler su ropa, buscando por todos los rincones, como si alguna respuesta estuviera escondida en algún lugar” (55).
The method of punishment that Julio uses soon begins to be effective. After her boyfriend doesn’t show up at Fernanda’s house for two weeks, his hitmen leave a car at her door. She plans to go look for him in it, but the police stop her on the way and, while searching the back seat, they find a human head in a black plastic bag. If before Fernanda dreamed of being a plastic Barbie so as not to bleed, and blood itself made her faint, now she does not seem mortified by the discovery: “Como si fuera una película de horror, el oficial tomó el contenido de la bolsa y lo exhibió ante todos. De los cabellos, el policía sostenía una cabeza que aún tenía los ojos abiertos” (Alarcón 2010: 73). The police arrest her, and the officer in charge tells another to throw the evidence onto her lap, in the police car: “Aviéntenle la evidencia a la puta perra” he orders (74). As we see, Fernanda associates the scene with a horror narrative, and then the policeman refers to her as a bitch, once again establishing the semantic field that the novel has been building and that will end with her definitively becoming a were-woman. After Fernanda is rescued from detention by the corrupt mayor of the city and her boyfriend, Julio, he apologizes for having put her through the situation. He asks her to forgive him and refers to her as “princesa” to which she responds curtly: “No me digas ‘princesa’” (83). In this way Fernanda seems to begin to express her evolution into a monstrous figure. She is no longer the well-off “princess” who is repulsed by blood, but shows herself to be desensitized to violent situations such as finding a severed head in the car she is driving. If Fernanda’s process of transformation began with the bloodbath to which her boyfriend subjected her in the first chapter, now, with the decapitated head, her transformation into a were-woman acquires a new momentum. The signifiers of blood and the decapitated head are the motives that trigger Fernanda’s process of change, awakening her inner beast. Furthermore, the manner of killing and of Fernanda coming into contact with these abominations is brutal and bestial.
It is from this scene that Fernanda will begin to assume greater control over her own life and will even begin to try out some of the same behaviors of Julio that previously bothered her: at a dance she seduces another man; after an incident with her car she threatens the driver of the other car with a gun; she maintains a relationship with another man after Julio asks her to marry him; she betrays her best friend, Dante, and then also seduces and becomes romantically involved with one of Julio’s subordinates. Although Fernanda’s transgressions seem modest, they show her path of her apprenticeship toward a form of monstrous criminality. Fernanda’s inner beast finally emerges when she discovers that Julio has a parallel family. Fernanda confronts Julio’s other wife and begins to beat her until the men who work for him separate them. At this moment she already knows that she has gone from being a victim of Julio/werewolf to now being his equal. We read Fernanda’s reflection:
Pero tú ya no me muerdes.
Cuando te vi quise albergarme en tus colmillos, que me apretara tu mandíbula, hacerme pequeña, tan pequeña. Mínima en tus mandíbulas, muñeca arruinada que escucha el crujir de sus propios huesos.
Cuando te vi quise ofrecerme a tus dientes. Yo estaba en la mitad de la vida, sin poder avanzar ni retroceder, y si tú me quebrabas todos los huesos no tendría otra opción que enroscarme a tus pies, esperando sólo que me arrojaras de ahí. Quise que no hubiera forma de irme. Así tan tuya quise ser.
Y ahora no me muerdes … Tú dejas que me vaya. (Alarcón 2010: 179)
As we see here, Fernanda has completed her transformation. Far from being a Barbie doll subject to the will of her boyfriend, she has learned from him to become a beast herself.
Although her transformation is almost complete, Fernanda still cannot stand the sight of blood. Still obsessed with her boyfriend’s wife, she decides to burn down his house. The next day, the fire is shown on the news, which reports that the woman’s two-year-old son died in it (Alarcón 2010: 199). Fernanda happily tells her friend Dante, who no longer recognizes her. He even points out that she has an inner beast: “Dante había dicho que yo tenía la maldad dentro. Me pregunté si sería algún asunto genético” (201). When Julio learns of his son’s death, he confronts Fernanda and threatens to kill her or have her raped by his hitmen. But Fernanda tells him that she has already had sex with all his men. In desperation at not knowing how to punish her and also in frustration at not wanting to kill her, Julio shoots himself in the head and dies in front of her. Then Fernanda’s final transformation into a were-woman occurs:
Sobre mí cayó el peso del más hombre. Yo me había ofrecido a sus dientes, pero yo era quien probaba su sangre. Yo quería que tronara todos mis huesos para no poder irme nunca de su lado, pero era su cráneo el que se había reventado. Yo me había dado como una ofrenda, pero su nuca era una flor de sangre. Yo amaba tanto su sangre que comencé a beberla. (Alarcón 2010: 204)
Fernanda’s transformation from a middle-class woman, a sensitive woman who cannot tolerate the sight of violence, begins with a baptism of blood and ends with her drinking the blood of her dead boyfriend. Her inner beast awakens, and Fernanda is now the precise embodiment of a were-woman.