‘Grillo, the Story of a Cricket’ by George McWhirter

A Nocturnal Vigil

From Pulp Literature Issue 45, George McWhirter invites us to investigate the identity of an insect. Enjoy this excerpt of our feature story below, then read the rest in Issue 45, Winter 2025.

Grillo, the Story of a Cricket

by George McWhirter

Cuautla, Morelos, 28 November 1990

A former co-researcher’s study in Perifèria (University of Barcelona) on a Catalan curandero in Agrument has prompted my return to Cuautla, in Morelos, to resume research for my own article on a curandero who practises in Mexico. Even when I was a boy, the famous curandero’s name was known to me from our visits to my mother’s parents. They died in Cuautla within days of each other in 1975, and here I am, fifteen years later, ready to meet the renowned Martí and explore any Indigenous innovation he has introduced to the Catalan practice.

On a Friday in the third week of my visits to his home, I meet another visitor, Don Fausto Iribás, who is neither a patient nor one of Martí’s associates. No sooner does Don Fausto learn that I am a trained clinical psychologist and anthropologist than he invites me to observe and answer a strange question about his sleep. That is, which insect most resembles his nocturnal behaviour when he lapses into a state beyond dream or anything like a normal sleep. Immediately, Martí takes pains to reassure me that the gentleman is a government minister and hacienda owner, a rational man of stature and responsibility. Also, we have something in common: both of us have studied for postgraduate degrees at Harvard. Surreal as it may seem (and highly unprofessional to indulge a delusion), I am nevertheless too curious to resist the visitor’s claim to be a soulmate of Kafka’s hero in ‘The Metamorphosis’.

On an early morning tour of Don Fausto’s estate my host demonstrates that his is a model hacienda, employing a manager and agricultural workers for the crops of avocado, banana, agave, and maguey crops. The agave’s root-bowl is dug out, crushed, and distilled into tequila, while the maguey milk from the stem is fermented into pulque. The benefits of all production go to those who labour to produce it. My host traces the raison d’être for the organization of the hacienda to its source in his soul’s extraordinary origins.

For me, the investigation into the identity of the insect and the nature of what he calls his soul starts with a follow-up breakfast meeting at his hacienda home. I begin with a question about the nocturnal vigil I will undertake.

Read the rest in Pulp Literature Issue 45, Winter 2025!

George McWhirter’s most recent fiction has been featured in The Fiddlehead and is scheduled to appear in an upcoming SubTerrain. He has been anthologized in Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change (Exile Editions, 2017), and Exile’s CVC: Carter V. Cooper Short Fiction Anthology Series, Book Three and Book Four. Exile Editions also published a book of his short stories and a novella, The Gift of Women, in 2015. He writes and publishes poetry as well as translating the contemporary Mexican poets Homero Aridjis, José Emilio Pacheco, and Gabriel Zaid. His translation of Homero Aridjis’ Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence (New Directions, 2023) was awarded the 2024 Griffin Prize for Poetry.

George McWhirter was the judge of our inaugural Magpie Award for Poetry in 2014, and you can find ‘Stalk’, his sci-fi take on Jack and the Beanstalk, in Pulp Literature Issue 9, Winter 2016.