Authors: Neel Mukherjee Rosalind Harvey Juan Pablo Villalobos
Tags: #contemporary fiction, #literary fiction, #novel, #translation, #translated fiction, #satire, #comedy, #rite of passage, #Mexico, #pilgrims, #electoral fraud, #elections, #family, #novella, #brothers, #twins, #Guardian First Book Award, #Mexican food, #quesadillas, #tortillas, #politicians, #Greek names, #bovine insemination, #Polish immigrants, #middle class, #corruption, #Mexican politics, #Synarchists, #PRI, #Spanish, #PEN Translates!, #PEN Promotes!, #watermelons, #acacias, #Jalisco, #Lagos, #Orestes, #Winner English Pen Award, #Pink Floyd, #Aristotle, #Archilocus, #Callimachus, #Electra, #Castor, #Pollux
‘Don’t worry. They’re in heat. It’s normal,’ I said when I saw my father trying to hide the erotic spectacle from the women in the family.
‘Normal? Do you think it’s normal for there to be a thousand cows in heat on your grandfather’s land? Where have they escaped from?’ my father shot back, initiating a reactionary movement in defence of reality and the status
quo.
‘Who wants normal quesadillas?’ offered my mother, inspired by the free association of ideas.
We all put our hands
up.
‘Me!’
‘Me!’
‘Me!’
‘Me!’
Everyone wants normal quesadillas.
The cows’ clamour found an echo: a stampede of bulls prepared to satisfy the bovine demands. Standing before the animals, Castor made a visual selection of the candidates, eliminating any specimens who were not up to his standards by dealing out
charro
moves,
manganas
and
piales
. The bulls that passed the test pushed their way in among the flanks and without delay unsheathed their immense cocks. The mooing stopped and gave way to the sound of friction and frottage, the rhythm of the in and
out.
‘Why can we see everything so clearly?’ asked Callimachus, who was ignorant of the mechanisms of pornography. ‘Wasn’t it night-time a minute
ago?’
It was true, the clarity couldn’t be coming from the fire; someone had turned on a light in the sky. We all looked up to check the phenomenon: a massively powerful light was emerging from the arse of a giant interplanetary
ship.
‘It can’t be true,’ my father said quickly, eager to dash our hopes.
And why
not?
Why not,
Dad?
Didn’t we live in the country we lived
in?
Weren’t fantastic, wonderful things meant to happen to us all the time? Didn’t we speak to the dead? Wasn’t everyone always saying we were a surrealist country?
‘It can’t be true. It must be a hallucination, some sort of delirium. We’ve got dengue fever! It must be dengue fever!’
Shut up, Dad, shut
up!
Didn’t we believe that the Virgin of San Juan had cured thousands of people without any knowledge of medicine? Hadn’t we put borders around a territory just to screw ourselves over? Didn’t we still hope that one day things would change?
It can’t be true, Dad? Are you
sure?
A hatch opened in the ship and, phlegmatically, accentuating his customary air of smugness, Aristotle floated down out of it. His feet touched the ground in the middle of the circle we had formed to receive
him.
‘What’s happened, arseholes?’
We embraced each other to prove we weren’t dreaming.
‘Castor! Pollux!’ my mother shouted, wanting to complete the embrace.
But the pretend twins were not ready for affection yet. Pollux raised his right arm, calling for silence, and only then did we realise he had become a boxer. His power of conviction was so great that the bulls stopped screwing the
cows.
‘Achaean forces! Prepare arms!’
Arms? What
for?
Behind us advanced the enemy army: priests, anti-riot police and more officers headed up by Officer Mophead and Jaroslaw. Castor began dealing out
manganas
and
piales
left, right and centre. Pollux knocked out his opponents at the first right. Some of the satisfied, resentful bulls had fun goring the men in uniform. Protected by a contingent of soldiers, the tie man appeared with a megaphone.
‘No, Oreo, not like that! Didn’t I teach you anything? Not like that! That’s useless! It’s a load of crap!’
‘Look, Dad. That’s the tie
man!’
‘That guy? It can’t
be!’
‘He can’t be true either? Why not? It’s him! I’m sure!’
‘Because that’s Salinas!’
‘Salinas? Who’s Salinas?’
‘No, wait, it’s López Portillo! It’s Echeverría! It’s Díaz Ordaz!’
‘Who are they?’
‘Sons of bitches!’
‘So finish them
off!’
Castor lassoed the tie man’s tie and tied it to the tail of the most insatiable of the bulls, who disappeared over the horizon of bovine backs at a frantic trot. Where were they taking him? To La Chingada!
In the heat of the battle, Jaroslaw and Officer Mophead came over to negotiate a ceasefire. The battle was also being fought on Officer Mophead’s head, where the curls were mercilessly torturing the straight hairs.
‘We have an eviction order.’
‘The land is my father’s, so talk to him. We have a right to be here,’ my father defended us, faithful to his reality in spite of appearances.
‘You’re just not getting
it.’
‘So help me
out.’
‘You have to leave
this
.’
‘
This
, what is
this
?’
‘
This!
’
‘It’s in contempt of reality.’
‘There is prison without bail.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Get
out!’
But Pollux was already standing in front of the two men. He planted an uppercut on Officer Mophead’s jaw, while Jaroslaw got a jab on the temple. How he had managed to hit them in the face, given his small stature, was something that neither Officer Mophead nor Jaroslaw would have been able to explain. Their two bodies flew across the smallholding and were lost beyond the river.
‘Quickly!’ said my father, mobilising us. ‘Now’s our chance!’
‘For what?’
‘To build the house!’
We ran like maniacs across the land, falling over as we went, getting tangled up in the stumps of the watermelons. It would almost have been better to crawl along. When finally we reached the area we had cleared, my father began hurriedly to organise the construction.
‘One or two floors?’
‘Two!’
‘Two!’
‘OK. What shall we put on the first floor?’
‘The kitchen.’
‘The lounge.’
‘My room in the kitchen,’ demanded Electra, ‘to be near the quesadillas.’
‘And a bathroom in Electra’s room!’
‘And a room for watching TV in the bathroom!’
‘And a garden in the TV room!’
‘No, no, not like that!’
Why not, Dad, why
not?
What’s the house made
of?
Then I remembered that in my trouser pocket I still had the little device with the red button.
‘Wait!’ I ordered.
And I pressed
it.
Two floors.
Click.
A lounge.
Click.
A kitchen.
Click.
Electra’s
room.
Click.
A bathroom.
Click.
A TV
room.
Click.
A garden with acacia trees! So we don’t forget where we’re
from.
‘What else, what else?’
A room for my mother to cry
in?
We finished the house and put in a mesquite door, a heavy, resistant door, which would keep watch over the passing of the years and the centuries. It was a magnificent house. It had a watchtower and there were bridges linking the rooms.
‘Dad, we could do what they did on the hill.’
‘What?’
‘Make another neighbourhood.’
‘A neighbourhood fifty metres square?’
‘Or another country.’
‘Another country!’
‘Poland!’
‘Poland.’
And then my father said to me, ‘Recite.’
And so I
did:
‘
Suave Patria, gentle vendor of
chía
,I want to bear you away in the dark of Lent,
riding a fiery stallion, disturbing
the peace, and dodging shots from police
,etc.’
We were about to go inside and to bed when the door opened and out came Uncle Pink Floyd. Outside jail now, he stretched up to his true height. He was enormous. He came and stood next to us to admire the building. His head was reflected in the glass of the second-floor windows. He raised his hand to check that the watchtower was
real.
‘You’ve made it look really nice.’
We all smiled delightedly: we had perfect sets of brilliant white teeth.
‘Thanks.’
But he immediately realised what was going on: ‘Hey, you bastards, don’t eat my watermelons.’
This is our house.
This is my house.
Now try and tear it down.
charro
a traditional Mexican horseman, somewhat like the North American cowboy.
Charros
take part in
charreadas
(a little like rodeos) and wear very distinctive colourful clothing, including a wide-brimmed hat.
chía
a species of flowering plant from the mint family that is native to Mexico. Its seeds are used to make a refreshing drink.
chicharrón
fried pork rinds.
chilaquiles
a breakfast dish made from fried corn tortillas mixed with salsa and simmered, then topped with cheese, cream and refried beans.
El Cerro de la Chingada
most commonly understood as ‘the hill in the middle of (fucking) nowhere’, the name of this fictional hill makes oblique reference to La Chingada (or La Malinche), a well-known Mexican figure who acted as both interpreter and lover to Hernán Cortés during the Spanish colonisation of Mexico and whose name has become a way of swearing, insulting people or expressing strong positive feelings. The name humorously implies that Orestes’ family home is in a godforsaken place. Sending someone to La Chingada is not unlike telling them to fuck off.
gordita
a cornmeal cake filled with cheese, meat or other ingredients, then fried or baked. It is a little like a Cornish pasty.
huarache
popular Mexico City street snack made of an oblong-shaped fried corn dough base with various toppings, such as salsa, minced beef and cheese.
huitlacoche
sometimes called corn smut, this is a harmless fungus that grows on corn and is sometimes used as a filling in quesadillas.
ISSSTE (Institute for Social Security and Services for State Workers) shops
a series of state-run supermarkets in Mexico selling goods at below-market prices.
nixtamal
corn soaked in lime, then hulled before being ground to form
masa
(corn dough), which is used to make tortillas, tacos, quesadillas,
tamales
etc.
quesadilla
a flour or corn tortilla filled with cheese or other savoury ingredients, served folded in half. Common fillings include courgette flowers,
huitlacoche
and
chicharrónes
.
tacos de canasta
literally ‘basket tacos’, these are fried tortillas folded and filled with refried beans, potato and chorizo, or other ingredients, then steamed until soft. Traditionally they are made at home, then wrapped in a cotton cloth and placed in a basket so that they steam on the way to the street vendor’s stand.
tamal
a cornmeal cake stuffed with either savoury or sweet fillings, wrapped in plantain leaves or corn husks and steamed.
telenovela
similar to a soap opera, this is a television genre popular in Latin America, Spain and Portugal. The limited-run serials usually feature melodramatic stories of unrequited love, pantomime-style villains and fairy-tale endings. The most famous examples are the Colombian
novela
Yo soy Betty la fea
, which was reimagined for a US audience as the hit TV show
Ugly Betty
, and
Los ricos también lloran
(
The Rich Cry Too
), in which a millionaire takes in a young orphan girl only to have his womanising son try to seduce her.
‘
the Little Red Rooster’s men
’
: the Partido Democrático Mexicano (Mexican Democratic Party) or PDM, which we referred to as the Pee-Dee-Em so as to avoid babbling like a baby or spitting, was better known as the Little Red Rooster party. It was founded in 1979 and disappeared in 1997, when it failed to receive the necessary votes to remain on the electoral register. Its origins were in the National Synarchist Union, which in turn was modelled on the fascist Spanish Falange party. It controlled the council of Lagos de Moreno during the first half of the 1980s. The party’s logo was a little red rooster crowing, summoning its fellow believers to get up and go to five o’clock mass, because the early bird catches the worm, as they say, although this has never been proved.
Carlos Salinas’ government
: Carlos Salinas de Gortari was president of Mexico from 1988 to 1994. He came to power after being ‘elected’ in a hotly disputed campaign against the left-wing candidate, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas. Suspicions of electoral fraud have not been dispelled to this day. The morning after election day, the computer system ‘went down’, giving rise to one of the most depressing footnotes in Mexican political history, the so-called ‘system failure’. During his presidency, Salinas implemented an extreme neoliberal programme notable for its privatisation of state companies. For most of his mandate he enjoyed international prestige, being applauded as a moderniser of the Mexican economy. No one saw the disaster that was coming. In December 1994, a few months after he left government, a serious economic crisis erupted, known to Mexicans as the ‘December Mistake’, which generated an international panic generally known as the ‘Tequila Effect’. The Salinist project had been to hide all of the country’s economic problems under the carpet. Salinas became the greatest of all the villains in Mexican politics. Suspicions of corruption during his government multiplied and his brother was jailed, accused of having assassinated the then party president. ‘Salinist’ remains a very serious insult.