The Obscene Bird of Night by José Donoso

Humberto Peñaloza, or Mudito, and a group of old women and orphans live in a dilapidated convent (or is it an asylum?) of sorts called the Casa de Ejercicios Espirituales de la Encarnación at La Chimba. Inside, there’s the ghost of an old man, who died naked and, as a ghost, chases women through the halls. If they pray hard enough, he slowly begins to be clothed, piece by piece. There’s Iris, who is the hope of the seven women/witches. She becomes pregnant and sneaks out at night to have sex. She treats one of the old women of the group as her baby and breastfeeds and pleasures her while Mudito gives voice to a paper mache mask that serves as an inanimate version of himself and muses on his life before: “...we all know one another here, in fact we’re almost all blood relations…to be someone, Humberto, that’s the important thing…” (122). And this is just the beginning, just a small window of what is to come.