ROBERT MCDONALD
An Unknown Species
“Huge, poisonous spiders are invading the town of Antofagasta. They are attacking
the inhabitants. Their bite inflicts great wounds like the gash of a knife...Nothing like these
spiders has, apparently, ever been seen before.” -Reuters News Agency, 1934
The spiders came to Antofagasta hours before the sun.
They knocked on our doors, scraping paint
with the bristles of their many blunt hands, they knocked
and they told us, in thin reedy voices, that our time
was over, the last hour
come, they knocked, and some of us
would later exclaim: “What could we do,
who would ever
expect?” —And some said
that of course
they came down from the mountains, a shaft
where the miners had gone too deep, though one survivor, a grandmother,
always swore they smelled of oysters, that their webbing was seaweed
and their footprints were wet—while most strange
was the case of Marcos, the tailor, who’d urged us
to stand up to them,
to rouse ourselves, load
our rifles—We heard him
from our refuge inside hall closets, behind heavy curtains, under
our beds, we heard him curse us for cowards, as the spiders scuttled to him
across the market square— “You!”
he cried. “I know you: Felipe, hunchback, friend
of my cousin, the butcher’s
assistant. Even with eight legs, who
could mistake your sideways walk? And Eva!
For twenty-three years you have crafted your dolls
in the shop next to mine. Spinster,
I know you, behind
that fearsome mask.”
Marcos’ voice grew shrill as the spiders threw their nets, as they raised
their knives— The sounds—
one heard his death everywhere
in Antofagasta—
As for myself, I tell you only what I remember: the spiders, so many,
loping like apes but as fierce as great dogs, I saw
the shrouded bundles—
They carried away our fathers,
they poisoned our young sons,
From my attic window I spied them out, my eldest daughter next to me,
my treasure, Esme’, my one
evening star, she looked, too—
“See Papa, the skin of them, green
with its own light. Look at the emerald flash
of their eyes. Papa,
how beautiful, they arc their limbs
like dancers. Papa, these are angels,
or footsoldiers
for God—”
The back of my hand
broke
her mouth, closed her words.
Dawn’s red light spilled into the attic.
It splashed the stained cobblestones of Antofagasta. Who wouldn’t
go mad, having seen
what we had seen?
But, you were asking me about
the spiders.
I think there are beings who change form and guise as they please.
Molt, divide, man or woman, you do not know
who you know when you look at them;
you do not
know
who you know
when you know each other. Now
all the years
later. Our quiet city. I nod
to the neighbors, I sit in the park— Who
to believe? I am an old man, alone, a crazy
voice
from the past—
My daughter was gone from me then, that morning.
She packed one carpetbag
and left my house.
For all I know
she lives
in America
now.
Everyone comes to me
with the hope
of a story:
The time the spiders came
to Antofagasta— I tell you,
believe me,
it didn’t take
a monster
to drag the girl away
