Embodiment and the Animal in Guadalupe Nettel’s El matrimonio de los peces rojos

En este trabajo se aborda una interacción entre los discursos cognitivos y posthumanos en la obra de la autora mexicana Guadalupe Nettel. Se pretende reinterpretar el motivo central de su antología de historias cortas: Natural Histories (2014), cuyos animales ‘son como un espejo que refleja emociones o comportamientos subterráneos que no nos atrevemos a ver’ (9). Propongo que esta ‘reflexión’ es un espejo de dos vías: no simplemente una imagen del humano reflejado en la opaca superficie del animal, sino que los humanos también actúan como un espejo y reflejan el comportamiento de los animales con quien habitan. La simulación entre los humanos y los animales representa un fenómeno que tiene lugar en el mundo real, llamado variadamente ‘la resonancia motora’ o ‘la simulación encarnada’. Esto es una imitación inconsciente que ocurre cuando alguien lo mira a otro, recreando sus acciones, movimientos o expresiones. (Gazzola et al.; Iacoboni; Landmann et al.; Uithol et al.). Aunque discutiré brevemente todas las narrativas, me centro en en particular en la primera historia de la antología: ‘El matrimonio de los peces rojos’, que demuestra una resonancia encarnada entre los humanos y no humanos que atraviesa niveles lingüísticos y caracterológicos. Un planteamiento cognitivo a esta resonancia en la narrativa revela la intersección entre paradigmas en la ciencia cognitiva, estudios de los animales, y posthumanismo en la antología.

Though amplified, this is a literary representation of a genuine neurophysiological phenomenon -embodied simulation. In real-life cognition, this is underpinned by 'mirror mechanisms' in the brain that create unconscious internal simulation of both sensorimotor behaviours (Gallese and Cuccio) and subjective emotions and sensations when recognised in others (originally hypothesized by Gallese and Goldman, 1998). Though this is a feature of human social interaction, it is not limited to intra-human interactions. In fact, the mirror neurons which are theorised to underpin these imitation mechanisms were initially found in cross-species interactions between humans and animals (P. F. Ferrari et al.; Pier Francesco Ferrari et al.). In exploring cross-species embodied simulation, Natural Histories engages with posthumanist accounts of the human-animal relationship, developing, as posthumanist theories have described, a 'subjectivity that attempts to transcend an essentialist separation between humans and nature and extends the traditional subject-object position' (Lindgren and Öhman) and problematizing the idea of a 'subjectivity coterminous with the species barrier' (Wolfe 2). As one of the discoverers of mirror neurons, Vittorio Gallese, writes, 'embodied simulation not only connects us to others, it connects us to our world' (39). Human-nonhuman embodied simulation and its posthumanist implications have previously been examined in fictional engagement with animals: for example, in a recent article in PMLA, Marco Caracciolo identifies embodied responses to nonhuman assemblages, exposing how verbal patterns encode embodied experience (2020). Caracciolo's approach is part of a surge of critical investigations based on embodied and distributed cognition: a project which is urgently implicated in human-animal relationships, as a cognition which extends into both body and other 'destabiliz [es] an entrenched notion of the liberal, autonomous, and masterful human subject' (Caracciolo 241). Natural Histories depicts a human-nonhuman embodied resonance that moves between linguistic, narratological and characterological levels, demonstrating how what is variously called kinesthetic empathy, embodied simulation or embodied resonance can be encoded in fictional narrative. This reading brings the field of cognitive literary Isabelle Wentworth doi 10.5195/ct/2021.493 | http://catedraltomada.pitt.edu 244 criticism into productive dialogue with contemporary Hispanic works -which have been previously neglected, relatively speaking, by both the wider cognitive turn and cognitive investigations of Spanish language literature. 11 This intersection is important for interpretations of Natural Histories, which brings new understandings of cognition into play with posthumanism 12 , depicting a distributed subjectivity which locates the novel within post-humanist and post-anthropocentric movements. Its portrait of cognition as both embodied and extended across the nonhuman environment suggests that, as Karen Barad says, '"We" are not outside observers of the world. Nor are we simply located at particular places in the world; rather, we are part of the world in its ongoing intra-activity' (Barad 828).

Embodiment and animals in cognitive literary criticism
Rather than a specific theoretical model, cognitive literary criticism consists of a constellation of approaches to texts which engage with contemporary neuroscience and psychology. This diverse range of research is unified by an analytical animus: to discover what the cognitive sciences can teach us about art, and what art can teach us about cognition (Richardson). Embodied simulation has been at the forefront of several developments in cognitive literary criticism, due to its possible role in relations between characters and readers, as well as between characters (Gallese and Wojciehowski; Cuccio; Hogan). Although generally these relationships are between humans (fictional or otherwise), cross-species embodied 11 As affirmed by Isabel Jaén, 'Within early modern Spanish criticism, cognitive approaches have been developing steadily during the past few years ' (110). This is further attested to by Jaen's edited collection with Julien Simon, Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature (2016). See also (Carrera; Jaén, "Teaching Cervantes's Don Quixote from a Cognitive Historicist Perspective"; Ruhe; Jaén, "Cervantes and the Cognitive Ideas of His Time"; Connor-Swietlicki; Dominguez; Simerka, Knowing Subjects; Simerka, "The Role of Empathy in Reading, Interpreting, and Teaching Las Casas' Brevisima Relacion de La Destruccion de Las Indias"; Mancing). In comparison to this focus on the Early Modern period, contemporary Spanish novels have been relatively neglected within the cognitive turn. 12 Posthumanism is a broad term to describe a call for redefinitions of the notion of the human, in accordance with post-anthropocentric and post-dualist approaches (Ferrando) simulation, which the following will investigate in Natural Histories, is no mere literary conceit: the first studies on mirror neurons were conducted on macaque monkeys as they witnessed a human hand grasping, and found that the same neural network for 'grasping' was activated in the monkeys' brains. In 2004, a study by Buccino identified embodied simulation occurring across 'non-conspecifics' (members of different species), using FMRI to assess cortical activation in humans during the observation of actions performed by monkeys and dogs. They found that familiar actions were 'mapped onto the observer's motor system ' (Buccino et al. 114). In 2007, a study by Gazzola et al. found that, during observation of nonhuman actions, 'the mirror neuron system transforms seen actions into our inner representation of these actions' (1674), as did a later study by Chaminade and colleagues. Cognitive scientists such as Cullen have termed this phenomenon 'motor anthropomorphization', where motor systems are activated by an anthropomorphised sense of a non-human entity as another human body (Cullen et al. 2014; see also Chaminade, Hodgins, and Kawato 2007;Chaminade et al. 2010 themselves as a key concern of the anthology, and taking the conceit of mirroring beyond mere allegory. My analysis will argue that this cross-species relationship is a concrete aspect of human concern in itself, rather than a symbol of human foibles. Similarly to DeVries, Valverde argues that, in terms of the human-animal parallel, 'the analogy establishes a system of equivalences that translates the way the characters perceive life as a couple/motherhood, without expressing it explicitly' (Valverde 137). 13 There are many overlaps between our understanding of the novel, but Valverde's argument positions the simulation between humans and animals as analogy in service of a larger thematic argument about motherhood and partnership under patriarchy. Others have noted that the novel contains insight about the animalistic, or 'primitive' aspects of human nature: 'Through comparison, Nettel seeks to observe the animal part that lives in humans' (Matschke 2). 14 The animals in the novel, under these interpretations, are used for 'comparison' or 'synecdoche', important only so far as they illuminate something about human nature. While these analyses are illuminating, they don't sufficiently recognise the critical role the animals in the anthology play: as animals, rather than as symbols for human experiences. By extension, I argue the relationship of the protagonists with the animals is a genuine exploration of human-animal relationships, not just humanhuman relationships. Through a cognitive lens, we can reinterpret Matschke's claim that Natural Histories explores the animal in humans. The stories present not just a representation of our animalistic natures, an echo of humanity's primitive evolutionary past, but a portrayal of how our embodied minds elide the boundaries between self and other, human and animal. As suggested by Lindgren, Snaza and Weaver and a proliferation of other posthuman theorists, nonhuman elements, including animals, are already 'existing parts of human selves' (Lindgren and Öhman). The stories demonstrate this from the perspective of embodied simulation, and what evolves in the anthology is a non-hierarchical intersubjectivity based on identification.

Human/nonhuman identification in Natural Histories
Early evidence that Nettel's stories do not subsume the significance of their animal characters into an examination of their human characters is found by looking at their relative salience. Prominence is given to animals in the story, both in terms of diegesis (in each text the emotional development of the protagonist is shaped by their animal counterparts) and language (as a superficial example, a frequency profile shows 'humano' is repeated seven times: 'animal' thirty-five). This is particularly noticeable in the key story of the anthology, 'Los peces rojos'. It The de-hierarchalisation of the human-animal relationship is evident from the first line. The fish is explicitly named, while the human protagonists are only referred to through the pronoun 'our' in an apposite phrase that further defines the subject, Oblomov the fish. This pronoun is without antecedent, leaving deictic ambiguity surrounding the human narrator. This syntactical construction is not, in the context of cognitive grammar, arbitrary or 'empty' (Langacker 110) but rather, carries lexical meaning: 'the distinctions made by... grammar reflect recurrent and generalised experiences. Like the words of a language, the grammar of a language is meaningful, too' (Radden and Dirven xi). The rest of the story continues in the same vein: the lives of the titular red fish organise the narrator's subjective experience of time, both in her role as a character and a narrator, and subsequently the discourse time of the narrative. The order of events in the human lives is subordinated to the fish's timeline. In particular, Oblomov's death temporally encloses the discourse time, so that the story is teleological: the introduction is followed by an internal analepsis, via which the story must reach the inevitable conclusion of the beginning. The flashback begins by recounting the arrival of the first two fish of the story, and the eponymous 'matrimonio de los peces rojos', the 'marriage' of the red fish: Oblomov wasn't the first fish we had, but the third. Before him, there were two others of the same colour, whom I did observe closely, and about whom I learned with great interest... I sat and watched the comings and goings, sometimes slow and rhythmic, sometimes frenetic and frantic, of the red fish. I learned to distinguish them clearly, not only by the colourings of their scales, but by their attitudes and manner of moving, and of searching for food. (12) 16 Each major episode of the story is plotted against the major events in the fishes' lives: after this arrival, the next development is the fishes' removal to a larger aquarium. After this, a physical altercation leads to the subsequent separation of the two fish; then, the death of the female, the arrival of Oblomov; the death of the 'widowed' male, and, finally, Oblomov's death and the end of the story. As I will explain in more detail in the next section, these events mark the high and low points of the narrative, shaping its emotional pace and tension. The narratorprotagonist fixates on the fish: watching them, talking about them to her husband, researching them, until she seems more deeply absorbed in their lives than in her own. The predominance of animals at the structural level of plot and narrative time complicates the interpretation that the role of the stories' animals is to elucidate the human protagonists. Against this interpretation, Nettel may in fact ironize the attempt to reduce animals to emblems of human personalities, or simplified symbols. In the first story, the narrator comments that 'besides, we had heard it said that red fish grant good luck ' (12). 17 Yet the fish, as we well know by the end of the story, are the opposite of good luck. Again, in the final story, the characters describe the snake at the centre of the tale as 'the Chinese symbol of renovation, lying inert in its enclosure' (296). 18 This 'symbol of renovation' not only lies dead 19 in its cage, but its death is followed by the slow disintegration of the family which bought it. In both cases, the narrative seems to be criticising the interpretation of animals as mono-dimensional symbols or metaphors for humans.
In the stories of Natural Histories, animals are on the one hand unknowable, and yet familiar. The human characters reflect upon the similarity in their circumstances: this is particularly prominent in 'Los peces rojos', as the narrator relates to the difficulty the red fish experience in cohabiting. However, an identification with animals also occurs in the other stories: in 'Hongos', the narrator sees the co-dependence of the sexually transmitted parasite and its host as not only a reflection of, but actor in, her love affair; the stages and fears of pregnancy are experienced by both the female cat and female narrator of 'Felina', and the snake in the last story, 'La Serpiente de Beijín' is, like his owner, displaced in a foreign land, a new habitat, and separated from his partner. Underlying these connections, to varying extents in each of the stories, are two psychological moves that the human characters perform: zoomorphism and anthropomorphism, which allow humans to encounter the 'other' of the animal world and yet identify with it.
Nettel's human characters, and the stories themselves, anthropomorphise animals (perceiving them as human-like) and, reciprocally, zoomorphise humans (perceiving themselves as animal-like), subsequently identifying the non-human world as part of their social sphere: their peers. This is one way in which embodied identification can occur between two very differently embodied beings. Though 'Nettel chooses animals, for the most part, that are not high on the chain of being...
creatures to which it is hard to give human character' (Christ 515), the human characters conceptualise the animals, insects and fungi in their stories as friends, family members, and even (emotionally) intimate partners. In her discussions of anthropomorphism as an ethical interpretive tool in narrative, Alexa Weik von Mossner argues, 'it is a fallacy to assume that these characters have to be human, or even like humans' (Weik von Mossner 111). The bridging of differences in embodiment is demonstrated in studies which have shown that the actual likeness of the non-human objects or animals to humans -that is, whether they truly possess person-like traits -is 'orthogonal' to the tendency to anthropomorphise certain entities (Waytz, Epley, and Cacioppo 2010, 59; also see Chaminade et al. 2010). In their analysis of Natural Histories, Ramírez and Díaz conclude, 'we observe in the work of Nettel a crossing of the conceptual domains of the animal world and the human universe. We identify that the principal characters of each of the stories employ the metaphor of personification and depersonification in order 20 "En conclusión, observamos en la obra de Nettel un cruce de dominios conceptuales del mundo animal al universo humano, detectamos que los personajes principales de cada uno de los cuentos emplean la metáfora de personificación y despersonificación para construir su identidad."; "una naturaleza humana feroz'" to the behaviors of the in-group' (Soliman et al.). Second, in order to be simulated, a gesture, expression or behaviour has to be interpreted as 'familiar': as found for example by studies on embodied simulation between different species which showed that only 'familiar' actions were 'mapped onto the observer's motor system ' (Buccino et al. 114). That is, a nonhuman's actions must be perceived  The narration endows the fish with human psychology: as quoted above, the narrator says of her third fish, Oblomov, 'he seemed to be a victim of depression' (11). Further, she assumes her empathy towards the 'depressed' fish is reciprocated, deploying hypermentalisation in granting the fish the cognitive capacity to understand social situations, and the emotional capacity to respond to them: 'And I am sure that, in his own way, he also felt sympathy for us ' (11). 22 This anthropomorphism becomes more pronounced as the story tells of the arrival of the first two fish. Early indications that the protagonist is inclined to see the fish that move into her apartment as peers -part of her social circle, rather than pets - and their relationship becomes 'un drama' to her, as 'compleja/complex' as human relationships, if not more so. When the male fish behaves badly in the relationship, the narrator judges the male fish's actions: 'his attitude of seduction seemed 22 "Y estoy segura de que, a su manera, también sintió pena por nosotros" 23 "nos gustaba la idea de compartir la casa con otra pareja" 24 "Yo le contaba las cosas que creía haber descubierto acerca de ellos y él las escuchaba complacido, como los aconteceres de la familia extendida que ahora teníamos en casa" 25 "nuestros peces se aman" 26 "De ahí́ la impresión de dialogo que me producían al verlos" 27 "Mientras leía aquello, sentí algo semejante al rubor. La sensación que produce enterarse de las facetas oscuras de nuestros conocidos sin su consentimiento" Importantly for the narrator's sense of embodied identification with the fish, this anthropomorphism is coupled with zoomorphism: as Nanay explains, 28 "Su actitud de seducción me pareció arrogante" 29 Much work in cognitive literary theory has been involved in analysing theory of mind processes in literary works. (Schmitz; Zunshine, "Theory of Mind and Experimental Representations of Fictional Consciousness") 30 "Tenía la sensación de que también a ellos les afectaba la distancia y que se echaban de menos" 31 "estoy convencida de que nuestros peces se aman, aunque no puedan vivir juntos" 32 "Podía sentirlo con la misma claridad con que en otras ocasiones había sentido el miedo de ella y la arrogancia de su compañero." 33 "Ya sé que dicho así suena como un disparate pero mis peces sufrían al estar separados y de eso estoy completamente segura"  in an identification which is at once zoomorphic and anthropomorphic: 'It seemed to me that the insect was watching me, and in its eyes I recognised the same surprise 34 "fueron las hormonas" 35 "Sólo nosotros habíamos seguido aferrados durante meses a la posibilidad de un cambio que ni sabíamos propiciar ni estaba en nuestra naturaleza llevar a cabo." 36 "todo lo que él no era ni podría ser jamás de acuerdo con su naturaleza" 37 "exactamente como se saca a un insecto indeseable de la casa para no tener que aplastarlo frente a los invitados" Relatedly, the identification between humans and nonhumans in the anthology destabilises the binary concepts used to divide them. Each story, in its own way, dissolves barriers of intelligence vs instinct, civilised vs primitive, selfaware vs non self-aware, determinism vs free will. Reason as a distinguishing factor between humans and nonhumans is disrupted: as the anthology's epigraph attests, 38 "Me pareció que aquel insecto me miraba y en sus ojos reconocí la misma sorpresa y desconfianza que yo sentía por él" 39 "su nerviosismo me dio asco y, al mismo tiempo, me produjo una sensación familiar. ¿O fue acaso la sensación de familiaridad la que me produjo el rechazo?" 40 "Su hongo amaba su cuerpo y lo necesitaba de la misma manera en que el organismo que había brotado entre Laval y yo reclamaba el territorio faltante." 41 "no pude dejar de preguntarme si no fue el parásito quien decidió marcharse a otro lugar." 42 "somos insatisfechos por naturaleza" The narrator seems as helpless to avoid the oncoming disaster in her relationship as a mouse walking into a trap: she notices 'the interior patio of our building appeared to me like a rat trap' (81). 49 Her fate is inevitable, like 'the economic collapse of some small country or the death of a terminally ill person' (87) 50 : a deterministic nature controls her choices. Like many other posthumanist interventions, the story establishes a 'subjectivity [which] … is not linked to transcendental reason' (Braidotti,The Posthuman,82). The representations of human agency and nonhuman agency work to bridge the entrenched gap between human and nonhuman subjectivities, particularly in light of theories of decision making in 43 "Todos los animales saben lo que necesitan, excepto el hombre." 44 "Además, habíamos oído decir que 'Los peces rojos' rojos dan buena suerte y en esa época buscábamos todo tipo de amuletos, ya fueran cosas o animales, para paliar la incertidumbre que nos causaba el embarazo." 45 "De dónde sacaba esa conclusión? Yo misma no tenía ninguna idea" 46 "El viernes no pude más y actué arbitrariamente." 47 "Cuánta sabiduría vi entonces en la naturaleza: ese animal era consciente, vaya a saber cómo, de que no era buena idea quedar encinta, ni siquiera contando con un espacio tan amplio y bien acondicionado como el suyo" 48 "fui directa al salón y me asomé a la pecera como quien consulta un oráculo" 49 "El patio interior de nuestro edificio me pareció una ratonera" 50 "como el derrumbe económico de algún pequeño país o la muerte de un enfermo terminal." Isabelle Wentworth doi 10.5195/ct/2021.493 | http://catedraltomada.pitt.edu 258 which emotional processes guide 'rational' judgement (Damasio). As I will explain below, simulation between the human narrator and her fish creates bodily and affective resonances which guide her unconscious behaviour and conscious decision making.

Embodied simulation in Natural Histories
The destabilisation of anthropocentric binaries, and the zoomorphism and anthropomorphism which underpin it, create an embodied identification between human characters and their nonhuman coprotagonists. As previously suggested, the human characters feel as though, despite the differences in shape, size and limb, they share an essential, common identity with the fish, insects and animals that populate their worlds: they share the same social sphere. When they spend extended time together, this activates the same social responses generated by spending time with other human beings. As the narrating protagonist claims, 'The connections between animals and human beings can be as complex as those that unite people' (141). 51 According to Gallese and Wojciehowski, the 'capacity to share the meaning of actions, basic motor intentions, feelings, and emotions with others' (2011,8) is mediated by embodied simulation, an internal model of observed behaviour which grants a degree of 'experiential understanding' between self and other (Gallese 3). Embodied simulation is thought to occur in part through special types of neurons, called mirror neurons, which discharge both when an action is performed and when it is observed. This creates a mimicry or simulation which is unconscious, pervasive, and usually imperceptible -though sometimes it 'slips out', as can be seen when we unconsciously mimic the expression, accent or body language of those we are talking to (see, for example, Niedenthal et al.; Calbi et 51 "Los vínculos entre los animales y los seres humanos pueden ser tan complejos como aquellos que nos unen a la gente." 52 These simulations are often unconscious, as is much of embodied simulation in real life. Indeed, the unnamed protagonist-narrators of each of the stories often muse on the unconscious, the 'subterranean' activity of the mind. As quoted above, the first narrator of the anthology, the protagonist of 'Los peces', reflects on 'subterranean emotions or behaviours' (13). Similarly, the final narrator, and protagonist of 'El serpiente', says, 'the movements in the lives of human beings ... usually have subterranean origins and, therefore, are difficult to locate in time' (252). 52 53 "Cuando entro en un laboratorio o en las aulas de clase, casi siempre prefiero acomodarme en las esquinas; del mismo modo en que, cuando camino por la calle, me muevo con mayor seguridad si estoy cerca de un muro. Aunque no sabría explicar exactamente por qué, he llegado a pensar que se trata de un hábito relacionado con mi naturaleza profunda." 54 "El resto del tiempo vivo encerrada y inmóvil en mi departamento, en el que desde hace varios meses no levanto casi nunca las persianas. Disfruto la penumbra y la humedad de muros." 55 "Había desarrollado apego por el hongo compartido y un sentido de pertenencia. Seguir envenenándolo era mutilar una parte importante de mí misma." These movements come to shape the narrative time of the 'Los peces'. The plot moves in its own 'vueltas': oscillations of tension and release, combat and truce, as the subtle process of embodied simulation is amplified to the level of plot and narrative time. The order of the events in the human lives is sequenced in relation to these events of the fish's lives: for example, the birth of the protagonist's child (arguably the most important moment in the human couple's relationship) is announced in terms relative to the fishes' own arrival: 'They appeared one Saturday morning, two months before Lila was born' (13). 62 Two months later, again the arrival of Lila is introduced relative to the fishes' timeline: What is certain is that I rested when, after various failed attempts and a visit to a technician, the red fish were installed [in their new aquarium] and the female had, at last, a cave to hide herself in. Lila was born that same week, in the Clinique des Bleuets, located a few blocks from the house, one of the few public maternity wards where they practice water births.

(40) 63
Here the temporal sequencing is highlighted by a motif of (aquatic) new beginnings: the narrator-protagonist settles her fish in their watery home, and once this work is done, she delivers her own child into its new home in a water birth.
Evinced by the explicit link, this method of ordering events in relation to each other, rather than using calendar time, suggests the temporal experience of the narrator: as Evans explains, there is 'compelling behavioural evidence which supports the 60 "Tanto el calor como las preocupaciones me sacaban muy temprano de la cama, antes de que Lila o Vincent se despertaran, y empezaba a dar vueltas en mi propio recipiente." 61 "Estuve dando una infinidad de vueltas de la biblioteca a mi cuarto." 62 "Aparecieron un sábado por la mañana, dos meses antes de que naciera Lila." 63 "Lo cierto es que descansé cuando, después de varios intentos fallidos y la visita de un técnico, 'Los peces rojos' quedaron instalados y la hembra tuvo, por fin, una cueva donde esconderse. / Lila nació esa misma semana, en la Clinique des Bleuets, situada a unas cuadras de la casa, una de las pocas maternidades públicas donde se practican partos en agua." view that… temporal reference strategies have psychological reality' (Evans 4).
More generally, the timeline of the fish structures the timeline of the narration. Both the human and nonhuman relationships, at the beginning of the narrative, are depicted as relatively peaceful: 'It seemed to us that they livened up the place, angled towards the back patio of our building, with the quick movements of their tales and fins ' (14). 64 Despite the lack of fighting, the narrator notes of her husband, 'He seemed distant' (17). 65 The uneasy peace is disrupted by a display from the male fish: 'I noticed that one of the fish, possibly the male, had opened his fins, which now appeared larger, almost doubled, and filled with colours' (17). 66 That day, the protagonist and her husband Vincent walk to the markets, where Vincent becomes angry at one of the narrator's small requests: to buy some oranges. This display, perhaps of Vincent's own 'true colours' (mirroring the male fish's demonstration), fills the protagonist with dread: 'What is certain is that in less than five minutes, I felt like my life had been covered by dark and threatening clouds' (20). 67 The following Monday, the narrator passive-aggressively retaliates by going out to a cafe and buying orange juice. Upon returning home, she 'went directly to the living room and peered into the fishbowl as if consulting an oracle: the male continued with his fins unfolded but now his companion also had a physical change: along the length of her body had appeared two horizontal, dull brown stripes.' (23) 68 After conducting research in the local library the protagonist finds out that 'in situations of stress or danger... betta fish develop horizontal stripes contrasting with the colour of their body.' (35) 69 Later, the narrator finds 'a brown line situated 64 "Nos parecía que alegraban esta pieza, orientada hacia el patio trasero de nuestro edificio, con los movimientos veloces de sus colas y sus aletas." 65 "Lo sentía distante." 66 "me hizo notar que uno de ellos, posiblemente el macho, había abierto sus aletas, que ahora lucían más grandes, como duplicadas, y llenas de colores." 67 "Lo cierto es que, en menos de cinco minutos, sentí cómo mi vida se cubría de nubes oscuras y amenazadoras." 68 "Fui directa al salón y me asomé a la pecera como quien consulta un oráculo: el macho seguía con las aletas desplegadas pero ahora su compañera acusaba también un cambio físico: a lo largo del cuerpo le habían salido dos rayas horizontales de color pardo." 69 "En situaciones de estrés o de peligro, seguía diciendo el autor, los beta desarrollan rayas horizontales contrastantes con el color de su cuerpo." exactly along the middle of my belly.' (32) 70 The parallel with the fish's own markings is unmistakable: this suggests that the protagonist, too, has begun to feel the hembra's sense of intimidation and threat, thematically operating as a critique of the patriarchal dynamics present in her relationship. Further, this is a poetic magnification of the phenomenon through which, over extended periods of embodied simulation, partners can come to resemble each other (Zajonc et al.): this physically manifests the symmetry between her and the fish, the embodied ways in which the human-animal relation affects her.
After the oranges incident, there is another lull. This doesn't last long: Vincent takes one of the narrator's actions as 'a provocation' (25), and the fight begins again. The next day, while he is at work, she goes to the local library, and learns about the betta fighting fish that she has taken into her home: 'According to the article, one of their most notorious characteristics is a difficulty with cohabitation.' She returns home and 'spent the afternoon reading on the sofa and observing the fish tank.' (32) 71 Watching them in their bowl, on this afternoon and many to come, the narrator is not simply observing the fish, nor simply a 'reflection' (Valverde 138) of herself: the glass bowl is simultaneously reflective and transparent, and she sees the combative behaviours of both the betta fish, and her own couple, as a moment of 'double exposure' (Nielsen et al. 68), to co-opt Phelan's terminology of truth in fictional discourse, a phrase which is particularly applicable to this cognitive reading. The gaze of the narrator is important to this human-animal relationship: as Quezada notes, this is the Derridean gaze of interspecies identification (2017). The narrator watches the fish for hours, trying to understand them: 'I sat to observe their comings and goings' (16) 72 ; 'I spent the afternoon reading on the sofa and observing the fish' (32). 73 When the fish fight, her gaze intensifies: 'While I was at home, I couldn't stop watching them, as if with 70 "Note una línea marrón situada exactamente en la mitad de mi vientre." 71 "Según el artículo, una de sus características más notorias era su dificultad para la convivencia.; Pasé la tarde leyendo en el sofá y observando la pecera." 72 "Me senté a observar el ir y venir." 73 "Pasé la tarde leyendo en el sofá y observando la pecera." that gaze, severe and disapproving, I could avoid an imminent confrontation. ' (37) 74 There is an inversion of the narrator's gaze, as the fish, in turn, watches her: 'He, by contrast, had more time, more peace in order to observe Vincent and I' (12). 75 The reader, too, is implicated: we watch the narrator watching the fish watching her, linking human and nonhuman, fictional and nonfictional actors in a loop of recognition. Through a cognitive lens, the gaze, or visual observation, is a crucial aspect of activation of the mirror mechanisms of self-other understanding (Coudé et al.; Triesch et al.): the narrator's close observation of the fish stimulates the embodied simulation which shapes the development of the story.
Another vuelta, and the relationships enter again into uneasy truce. This lasts throughout the re-homing of the fish into a bigger aquarium, and the birth of Lila. While both the fish and humans 'had maintained calm' (40), 76 the narrator confesses that these are 'tense days for [the fish] but also for us' (36). 77 Observing the fish, the narrator explains that they 'taught me that screams can also be silent', that 'fish are perhaps the only domestic animals that don't make noise ' (37). 78 Yet the narrator and her husband recreate the fishes' silent struggle: 'we spent the whole day without saying a word to each other.' (50) 79 Finally, this tension boils over, in both the human and nonhuman couples. The fish 'had a fight and both were seriously injured.' (62) 80 Similarly, there is a dramatic argument between the narrator and her husband, and she goes to bed 'with the certainty of having violated some unbreakable barrier' (54). 81 Both the fish and the humans are separated from their partners: the narrator goes to visit her parents, and the fish are placed into separate tanks. During this sad time in the fishes' relationship, the narrator describes, 'it seemed to me that the aquarium gave off the stench of putrefaction.' 74 "Mientras estaba en casa, yo no podía dejar de vigilarlos, como si con aquella mirada, severa y quisquillosa, hubiera podido evitar una inminente confrontación." 75 "Él, en cambio, tuvo más tiempo, más serenidad para observarnos a Vincent y a mí. 76 Se habían mantenido tranquilos." 77 "Días tensos para ellos pero también para nosotros." 78 "Me enseñaron que los gritos también pueden ser silenciosos; los peces son quizás los únicos animales domésticos que no hacen ruido." 79 "Pasamos la mañana entera sin dirigirnos la palabra" 80 "tuvieron una pelea y ambos están bastante lastimados" 81 "con la certeza de haber violado una frontera infranqueable." relationship, and also for that of the fish. One hot morning, the protagonist wakes to find that 'the female appeared to be floating in the aquarium. She had broken fins and a missing eye' (80). 86 The dead hembra has broken wings (symbolically, it cannot escape) and a blinded eye (it cannot see), just like the narrator, who cannot see her options, and feels that she cannot escape her situation: 'I couldn't stop asking myself if we were going to get out of this, and, in case we couldn't, what alternatives we had. At least for me, I couldn't imagine any.' (80) 87 In a final parallel, this inertia, or inability to leave, is broken by the departure of Oblomov, 82 "Me pareció que el acuario despedía un olor a podredumbre." 83 "Sin embargo, en esas aguas estancadas en las que Vincent y no nos movíamos, nuestra relación siguió su curso paulatino hacia la putrefacción." 84 "Comparado con un río, incluso con un estanque pequeño, un acuario, por grande que sea, es un lugar muy reducido para seres insatisfechos y proclives a la infelicidad como los beta. Las mentes de algunas personas son semejantes." 85 "empecé a destruir uno por uno los platos y el florero que había sobre la mesa. -Estás enferma! -gritaba él, intentando inútilmente que recapacitara." 86 "la hembra apareció flotando en el acuario. Tenía las aletas rotas y un ojo desorbitado... El macho también estaba herido pero aún conseguía moverse entre las algas del fondo" 87 "No dejaba de preguntarme si íbamos a salir de eso y, en caso de no conseguirlo, qué alternativas teníamos. Al menos para mí, no imaginaba ninguna"  (Hatfield et al. 153). As found in a study by Palagi et al., 'emotional affinity matters more than species' when it comes to emotional contagion (Palagi et al.). The close emotional affinity that the narrator feels with the fish (particularly her 'solidarity' with the hembra), means that she is affected by the emotions that she reads in their behaviour. The depression, anxiety, and anger that she interprets in the fishes' behaviour influences her own declining emotional state. Many descriptions indicate that the narrator is not only feeling sorry for the fish but also feeling their suffering: an unconscious emotional contagion. 'Watching the aquarium puts me in a bad mood. The lives of those two conflicted beings saddened me.' (55) 89 Her sadness for the hembra is an emotional sensation both transitive (taking another as its object) and reflexive, echoing Ricoeur's argument that empathy creates us as both subjects and objects. There is a difference between sympathy and empathy, the latter meaning you feel for the other as if it were your own pain: a sensation partly facilitated by embodied simulation (Barad 828 They always need more space, and feel threatened even by their partner. They 91 "Lo que más me entristeció esa noche y los días siguientes fue ver a nuestros peces separados. Tenía la sensación de que también a ellos les afectaba la distancia y que se echaban de menos" 92 "Yo no sufría, por supuesto, de depresión postparto pero sí de un abatimiento profundo y de un mal humor permanente." 93 "Toda mi solidaridad, por supuesto, la tenía ella. Podía sentir su miedo y su angustia." 94 "Podía sentirlo con la misma claridad con que en otras ocasiones había sentido el miedo de ella." 95 "sentí cómo mi vida se cubría de nubes oscuras y amenazadoras" 96 "Podía sentir ... su angustia de verse acorralada, su necesidad de esconderse." Isabelle Wentworth doi 10.5195/ct/2021.493 | http://catedraltomada.pitt.edu 268 interpret the existence of the other with all this pressure upon them.' (65) 97 In time, the narrator comes to view her life as her own enclosure. Like the 'round fishbowl', she feels that her space, too, is impossibly small: 'domestic life became to seem unbearable to me' (57). 98 The conceptual metaphor that situations are containers facilitates the narrator's sense of the parallel between her relationship and the fishes' lives, enabling her to map her own metaphorical entrapment onto the literal confinement of the fish (Vuković Stamatović and Bratic). Through this metaphor the story mobilises the themes of partnership and patriarchy, as they exist throughout the animal kingdom. When the protagonist imagines freedom from this confinement, her daydream is that of a trapped fish dreaming of freedom in the ocean, and the scene is focalised through these eyes: 'I tried to imagine that, instead of being here, I found myself in the British sea, shaken by immense waves' (41). 99 The blurring of embodied subjectivities, between human and fish, means that the narrator's imagination, too, simulates the perspective of the fish with which she has bonded. The theme of entrapment, of being caught in a container through which you can see the outside world but are held by invisible forces, works a mise en abyme throughout the narrative. Much of the narrator's entrapment is due to her child: she feels that she cannot leave. Yet her baby itself is entrapped, the narrator, too, a container, the baby 'enclosed/encajada' (38) in the fishbowl of her belly: 'meanwhile, the baby floated in amniotic liquid inside my stomach.' (38) 100 As Valverde observes, 'the narrator comes to feel herself in her own receptacle, observing another receptacle, and at the same time is a receptacle' (Valverde 39). 101 The story, too, is held within the confines of the discourse: its own fishbowl, through which readers can peer, but the characters cannot escape. This container is 97 "pueden ver estrecha la pecera más amplia. Siempre les falta espacio y se sienten amenazados incluso por su pareja. Con toda esa presión encima interpretan la existencia del otro" 98 "la vida doméstica comenzó a parecerme insoportable"; "una cárcel domiciliaria" 99 "trataba de imaginar que, en vez de estar ahí, me encontraba en el mar de Bretaña, sacudida por unas olas inmensas" 100 "mientras, la bebé flotaba en el líquido amniótico dentro de mi vientre." 101 "la narradora llega a sentirse 'en [su] propio recipiente' observando otro recipiente (y siendo observada por la pareja dentro de este recipiente), y al mismo tiempo es un recipiente." encircled or circumscribed by the death of Oblomov: another fish that, like his predecessors and the narrator herself, couldn't survive confinement. Within these invisible walls, narrator, fish, fetus and story are contained. The claustrophobia pervades not only this story, but the anthology as a whole: humans and nonhuman characters trapped in their neurotic, obsessive lives, squeezed between the front and back covers of the book. also provides a blueprint of the cause and effect of embodied simulation, the movement of influence between self and other: an observer sees an abstract entity 102 "Antes de que terminara, Oblomov había muerto. A nadie sorprende que Vincent y yo nos estemos separando." 103 "Cuánta sabiduría vi entonces en la naturaleza"; "todo lo que él no era ni podría ser jamás de acuerdo con su naturaleza"; "Sólo nosotros habíamos seguido aferrados durante meses a la posibilidad de un cambio que ni sabíamos propiciar ni estaba en nuestra naturaleza llevar a cabo." out in the world and then identifies it as a being like them, creating a simulation of shared behaviour which changes the observer's subjectivity. The narrator's initial impersonal recognition moves through stages of identification to simulation: its, his, ours.

Concluding notes
As Lámbarry argues in his review of the representation of animals in Hispano-American literature, 'ethology is... the science that studies reality from the point of view of animals: thanks to it, we know a dog, ants, and bonobos can see, feel, think and imagine. However... where science ends, art begins.' (Lámbarry 2) 104 Although this essay has taken a conservative focus on human experience, read through this lens the anthology implicitly questions axes of difference between humans/nonhumans and self/other. The staging in Natural Histories of both intersubjectivity and intercorporeity (to use Gallese and Wojciehowski's term) is an essentially ethical move, toppling value hierarchies between human and animal, animal and insect, insect and microbial parasite. As Pepperell argues, these perspectives involve 'moving away from the notion of humans as unique, isolated entities and towards a conception of existence in which the human is totally integrated with the world in all its manifestations, including nature, technology, and other beings' (Pepperell 100). Nettel's representation of the human-animal relationship 'erases the protagonism of humanity' (Quezada 74). I understand the anthology's challenge to these value systems as located in its representation of human cognition, rather than metaphor or vestigial primitive traits in human nature.
Viewed in this way, the collection of stories enriches growing research on representations of cognitive processes in literature, and the subsequent