Myriam Campello
TRANS. BY Daniel Hahn and Padma Viswanathan
A Short Witch Story
I could tll somthing was diffrnt whn I wok up and found that my first vowl had vanishd. Gnrally, bfor I hav vn had a p, lik a slpwalkr, I turn on my computr and typ a fw sntncs just to gt myslf in tun with lif, and th hum of th machin is incrdibly soothing, lik somon gntly stroking my hair. But thn, whn th dvic spat out that holy txt lik a toothlss littl grinning kid, I noticd that th first vowl had disappard from thos fw lins I’d writtn and I lapd backward. And for it to b, of all things, that lovlist and most rsonant of lttrs! Though if you think about it, it’s lss a lttr in its own right than a hlpmt, ltting th othr lttrs do thir jobs. For a whil, I was a littl bwildrd. Nop, it wasn’t th computr. Thn I rmmbrd th argumnt I’d had with that woman on th subway, could that b it? This woman, carrying a hug bundl, shovd m with such forc that I almost fll ovr. Hr violnc shockd m bcaus I was much closr to that mpty sat, so I thought stop bing an idiot for onc in your lif, and I sat down – so thr. Sh lookd at m with such fury, two hissing snaks in hr ys, and spat: ‘I’m going to curs you!’ ‘Fin,’ I ylld from my cornr sat, ‘go ahad and curs m!’ I paid it no mind, of cours, I don’t bliv in God or th dvil, and anyway hxs can only gt you if you bliv in hxs (thinking about it now, though, might sh b a witch?). In any cas, it’ll pass! Th following dy, not only did it not pss, but th scond vowl wnt too. I flt totl pnic rising in my chst – t this rt, I’d b mut in fiv dys! s soon s I could mng it, I took coupl of dp brths & thought, scrw it, th Polish hv md do with nothing but consonnts for cnturis nd thy’r succssful nd culturd nd ll musicins. Polnd’s just on xmpl, who nds thos dumb vowls to mk it in lif, nywy! But just in cs, bfor som othr vowl dispprd down th drin, I strtd hnging out on th subwy hoping to find th womn with th bundl to bg hr forgivnss on bndd kn. I’ll do nything for th womn, I’ll vn wsh cloths nd dlivr thm to th strngst plcs, no mttr whr, I’ll do whtvr I hv to to mk th witch lift hr curs nd giv bck my vowls. (Othrwis, I’m so totlly scrwd.)
Myriam Campello is a prize-winning writer from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, author of six novels and two short story collections. Campello has also translated the works of John Steinbeck, Stephen King, Georges Simenon, Alexandre Dumas, and Virginia Woolf to Portuguese.
Daniel Hahn is an award-winning translator, writer and editor. His 2026 books include If This Be Magic: the unlikely art of Shakespeare in translation, and translated novels from Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Peru and Guatemala. He is also co-editor of the forthcoming Penguin Book of Brazilian Short Stories.
Padma Viswanathan is author of three novels and a memoir, published in eight countries, and has translated four books from Brazilian Portuguese. She has been nominated for the Pen Center USA Fiction Prize, the International Booker Prize and others. She is also co-editor of the forthcoming Penguin Book of Brazilian Short Stories.