Carried Away by the Lower River

Paul Theroux’s “The Lower River” (published by The New Yorker last month) is a great story. Its full text is available here. Okay, so it’s a bit uneven. It seemed to miss a step when it started, but then it catches on and it keeps you hooked until the very end—when it offers no easy solutions, psychological or otherwise. More on this in a minute.

“The Lower River” is a story about an elderly American man, called Altman, who travels back to the tiny town of Malabo, in the south of Malawi. Altman had been a teacher there for four years when he was younger, and he remembers it fondly (“his Eden,” he calls it). People quickly remember him when he returns, they almost idolize him, and he glows with the warm reception: if only people back home could see him now, he thinks. He feels nothing has changed (“It was as it had been—[…] a world that was ancient in its simplicities”).

But things have changed. The village leader is a young and wily man called Manyenga, who greets Altman with uncertainty and respect at first, quickly asks for money, and then constantly cheats Altman and leads the town in a collective effort of keeping Altman in demeaning captivity—an effort masquerading as praise and obeisance. They call him “Father” and “chief,” even while they struggle to keep him from straying away. Manyenga tries to match Altman with his niece. Altman becomes intermittently sick, intermittently angry, utterly impotent. He tries to leave or get help, but fails every time. The villagers show him respect again when he runs out of money—and will thus need to make a run to town to get another cash withdrawal with his credit card. But we realize this respect is all for show. In the end, Altman plays out the rituals of salutation and propriety with the newly diffident Manyenga—“but this time without hope.”

All this sense of being trapped reminded me of powerful moments in Coetzee’s Disgrace. As I read, I kept begging Altman to shake himself free and run away. But this was asking too much from this sickly and entrapped man. There is a grippingly realistic existentialism at work (nonexistential existentialism, if you will). In the end, we’re not caught in a deranged person’s mind, or shunted into a different realm of existence. Such an existentialist nightmare is staged and run by this-worldly people. And, as a story, it works rather well.

I said “The Lower River” missed a step when it started. What I meant is that it takes a few paragraphs to really latch on to Altman’s consciousness. The story is narrated in the third person, but it follows Altman’s thoughts closely, using him as the narrative’s prism. For instance, when Manyenga makes a grunting sound early on, we are not told what the grunt “really” means; we get this: “Altman knew that the grunt meant money.” We are not told abstractly about the villager’s fear of snakes: “The villagers feared snakes, he knew.” This is a familiar form of focalizing narratives. But it’s done unevenly. At first, the narration explains things Altman wouldn’t need to recall. In the first paragraph, for example, Malabo is not just Malabo, but “a village called Malabo.” Why say this? Altman knows it’s a village, and as readers, we could figure it out painlessly. The second paragraph is a long description that seems plucked from a travel guide. Furthermore, the second section has this sentence, which seems to have wandered in there from some other text: “Like many other resort areas in Africa, [Malawi] was a country where local people starved and the few tourists ate well and were fussed over.” This is no longer intrusive when the story continues, as it focuses on Altman.

Some descriptions are luscious, made with just the right words. I liked how, after having lived a year in Malabo, Altman “had understood the inflections of the weather.” I liked the provocative way in which Altman, seeing the thin and probably famished girl Manyenga keeps thrusting on him, thinks “she had the starved angularity of high fashion.”

I enjoyed seeing a story like this in The New Yorker. Stories of the everyday have become quite common (one might even say the norm in many short story venues); I do enjoy tales that educe powerful descriptions from the quotidian, stories in which nothing out of the ordinary happens and yet we feel moved by the language and the insights and the characters. However, it’s great to be reminded of how the imagination can lead us to situations that drive people to extraordinary challenges, where, yes, even life itself hangs in the balance.

Edición

Ricardo se despierta y ve que tiene media cara apoyada en la espalda de alguien. Hay sudor por todo lado. Despega su mejilla. Su boca está seca, agrietada casi, y él quiere un trago. Nota un vaso en la mesa pero se estira y no lo alcanza. Además, la espalda contra la que está apoyado se mueve y gime, y Ricardo se mueve también, contra su voluntad, hasta que entiende lo que está pasando. Retira bruscamente su pelvis de las nalgas del otro y empuja ese otro cuerpo contra la cama. Ricardo se pone de pie y se toma lo que sobrevive del whiskey aguado.

—Venga, ¿y yo? —pregunta el cuerpo desde la cama. Ricardo lo mira. Es un hombre. Es más, se llama… ¿cómo es que se llama?

—¿Usted qué me cree? —pregunta Ricardo—. ¿Marica? No joda.

El cuerpo lo mira en silencio. Ricardo se derrama sobre una silla. El cuerpo se viste, empezando por unos calzoncillos blancos, que pronto se tiñen de rojo. Como una mancha de humedad, piensa Ricardo. Alguien tiene una buena metáfora con eso, sobre la vida del artista que penetra su obra como la humedad en una pared. ¿Millás? ¿Montero? Alguna de esas biografías noveladas. El cuerpo se pone un abrigo de lana, prende un cigarrillo y se acuesta sobre los codos. Usa una lata de cerveza como cenicero.

—¿Usted cree que me está tentando o algo así, huevón? —pregunta Ricardo. Frota las manos para defenderse del frío de una madrugada en Bogotá.

El cuerpo sigue fumando. Ricardo intenta tomar del vaso de whiskey pero está seco. Tira el vaso bajo la silla. La alfombra amortigua la caída.

—Y mi cuento —pregunta el cuerpo—,  ¿ya lo leyó?

Ricardo lo mira.

—¿Cuál es su cuento?

—“Destinitos carnales”, se llama. Sobre una prostituta que…

—Es un asco —dice Ricardo, buscando entre los papeles del escritorio.

—Tal vez lo tiene confundido, Ricardo, es el de la prostituta que se encuentra con…

—Ya le dije y no me haga repetirme: es un asco.

Ricardo encuentra una bolsa plástica, la desanuda e inserta en ella un pitillo plástico hasta llenarlo de cocaína. Luego introduce el pitillo en su nariz y aspira. Cierra los ojos.

—Carajo, era bastante —dice otra voz, que ya no viene de la cama, sino de los muslos de Ricardo, que está sentado ahora en el borde de una cama de hotel. El cuerpo ya no está. Ricardo agacha la vista y encuentra a esta niña rubia que se llama, sí, como una flor, pero ¿cómo?, ¿Rosa? Ya. Amapola. Es su seudónimo. Debe tener otro nombre pero ni idea. Ni importa. Amapola se está secando la boca con el dorso de la mano. La cara le resplandece. Suda. Tiene el pelo cogido atrás en una moña y Ricardo nota que su mano derecha está posada sobre esa moña. Él se revisa y ve que está desnudo desde la cintura hasta los zapatos: los bluyines están arrugados sobre los Converse. Con la mano izquierda Ricardo saca un cigarrillo de marihuana del bolsillo de la camisa.

—¿Y el mío? —pregunta Amapola. Ricardo busca otro y se lo pasa. Ella consigue un encendedor en su cartera y los prende ambos. Ricardo tose y con los dedos saca menudencias de hierba de la lengua. Por la ventana alcanza a ver el brillo de Medellín.

—¿Está buena, no? —le pregunta a Amapola.

—Me siento como Poe —dice ella—. El mundo está hecho de fantasmas que riman, ¿no te parece?

—Esa frase es de tu novela.

—La leíste.

—Empecé. No pasé de la 50.

—¿Qué le dijiste al editor?

—Que gastabas más energía volviéndote un personaje de novela que en los personajes de tu novela. —Fuma—. Le dije que la tirara a la caneca.

Ricardo aspira grandes bocanadas de marihuana. Amapola se sienta en el filo del escritorio. ¿En qué momento se quitó la falda? Ricardo pasa la vista por el cuarto y encuentra la falda colgada sobre el espaldar de una silla. Levanta la mirada y ve un par de tetas que tiemblan. Son diminutas y se sacuden de un lado para otro, aureola pura. Es el sofá de la sala de su casa, Ricardo lo reconoce. Pero a ella no. La mira. Detalla la boca de esta mujer, que se aprieta cuando muerde el aire y se abre para decir monosílabos como sí y más. Mira la nariz, dos fosas nasales que se encogen y se ensanchan. La lengua se pasea por los labios. La cara brilla con sudor, bajo puñados de pelo negro y rizo. ¿Martina? ¿La esposa de Juan M.? Ricardo cierra los ojos y trata de no escuchar los gritos que le parecen cacofónicos. Rápidamente otros gritos los reemplazan, ya no de una soprano sino de una alto.

—¿Cómo así que la estructura naufraga? —pregunta una voz demasiado apasionada. Ricardo intenta calmarla manoteando con la mano derecha; se calma a sí mismo con un trago de vodka—. Explíquese pues que usted fue el que dijo eso en su reseña de El Espectador. ¿Usted sabe lo que eso va a significar en ventas, malparido? ¿Por qué no comió callado, o por qué no se guardó sus opiniones de mierda para los borrachos de sus amigos? Después de lo que hicimos, Ricardo. Después de todas las perversiones que hicimos porque a usted le parecía “estéticamente desafiante”. ¿O es que no se acuerda?

Qué buena frase, piensa Ricardo. Pero tal vez ha estado abusando de ese adverbio. ¿A quién fue que describió hace unos días como estéticamente impedido?

—Consígase otro trabajo —dice Ricardo—. No le hace mal a nadie. Wallace Stevens tenía su trabajito. Kafka también. Y mire a Saramago todo lo que se esperó hasta empezar a escribir.

—¿Pero cuál es el problema? —pregunta el pelirrojo desde la silla. Tiene una melena que parece nacer en la cabeza y llegar hasta los tobillos. También tiene una erección monstruosa que a Ricardo lo hace pensar en las comedias de Plauto.

—El problema es la técnica —dice Ricardo desde la cama—. Usted ya lleva mucho tiempo trabajándole a esto como para que uno crea que algún día va a aprender. Técnica: construir personajes de manera oblicua, aprovechar la narración para caracterizar situaciones y para generar cierto ánimo en los lectores, tender trampas que no sean jueguitos fort-da de novatos, usar los silencios tan bien como las voces. Técnica, chino.

—¿Y esto entre nosotros, por ejemplo? —La erección se marchita. Tiene pantorrillas de jugador de fútbol. Esa sería una profesión muy digna para él—. ¿Cómo lo contaría usted con “técnica”?

—No hay nada entre nosotros, no sea tan iluso. No hay técnica que valga.

Ricardo siente un golpe en la cara. Es una bofetada. Abre los ojos y ve su imagen en el espejo del baño. Tiene los ojos imposiblemente rojos. Ojeras. Despeinado. Una acidez le recorre la garganta y las encías se le quedan dormidas.

—En su tumba va a decir: leí, culié y me rasqué las huevas hablando mierda sobre el talento y la técnica.

Es una voz femenina y se aleja. La puerta de la entrada del apartamento retumba. Ricardo se agacha para tomar agua de la llave. Qué métrica más desastrosa, la de ese epígrafe.

Alarcón in BASS 2009

This year’s volume of The Best American Short Stories is off to a dour start. The series editor’s Foreword tells us that, “[a]t this time, all sorts of publishing seem destined to disappear, or at least exit from this challenging time enormously scathed. I have talked with editors who claim that literature is dead” (p. ix).

Then we get this edition’s editor, Alice Sebold, elaborating further in her Introduction: “We are living, as I write this, in the worst economic conditions almost any of us can remember. In the world of publishing, good people have lost their jobs, and more job losses are on the horizon. Whole divisions of venerable publishing houses are falling away. Historic names are disappearing overnight, there one day and gone the next. The individuals who have survived so far are not quite sure why, and spend hours every day doing a job—editing quality fiction—that the powers that be are beginning to deem no longer necessary” (p. xv). In such a milieu, she goes on to say, best ofs—along with other awards and prizes—are a good way to help talented writers stand out.

Well, in the face of such a dismal diagnosis, there we have it, BASS 2009. That’s always interesting news. I’ll comment on the volume as a whole later, but some things stand out. Four stories (out of twenty) came from The New Yorker, which is a huge number for a single magazine that publishes a story per issue. It’s also noteworthy that a single electronic journal, American Short Fiction, had two of its stories chosen for BASS 2009. I had discussed one already (Ethan Rutherford’s “The Peripatetic Coffin”), and I must admit I was somewhat surprised when I finally saw it here, in print; it’s not a bad story, sure, but is it one of the twenty best published in the US and Canada over a whole year? I don’t know.

The first story in the volume is Daniel Alarcón’s “The Idiot President,” which I missed when it was published last year in The New Yorker (here). This story was hatched as part of Alarcón’s new and unfinished novel, but it “took on a life of its own,” as the author says in a note at the end. I’ll spend the rest of the post briefly discussing that piece.

I had discussed a story by Alarcón a while back, and I was left with half-hearted appreciation: yes, it’s good, but it’s not something to go gaga over. The same goes for “The Idiot President.”

We’re back to a remote setting, this time high in the Andes, where everything always seems unbearably cold for the narrator, an urbanite called Nelson who’s always longing to move away to California. Nelson goes on a two-month tour of the countryside, with a politically motivated theatre company called Diciembre. They perform the play “The Idiot President,” in which a despotic president chooses random people from the population to serve him for a day. The idea for the play is good, and Alarcón says it was the “spark” that set off the entire story. The theater company visits far-off settings, and the story comes to a climax during a performance in a mining town: there is no electricity for the night performance, and the show takes place using the miners’ helmet lights. It’s a powerful image.

I liked that the story didn’t end there. It was bold of Alarcón to keep going. People probably advised him against it. The story continues. Nelson doesn’t move to California. He drifts hazily on with his life, working odd jobs and living on the verge of impecuniousness. He puts all his hopes on getting a small part as an informant in a soap opera. He feels he’s fated to get the part: the character’s name in the soap is Alejo, and that was also the name of the character Nelson played in “The Idiot President.” After a month, though, measured by the creep of forest fires in the inaccessible California, nobody had called.

There are some interesting asides on how acting bleeds into life (and viceversa: the whiter-skinned of the crew plays the president, while the darker-skinned plays the servant). There are some nice thoughts on the changes wreaked by the country’s prosperity, the sense that much has been lost, and that a dictatorial unanimity has crawled into power. That was all handled well, as are many of the tale’s details, placed carefully and teasingly throughout the story. But I must admit I did want to see a narrative that didn’t take place in far-off locales, with such a hearty presence of the exotic. Maybe next time. For now, though, “The Idiot President” is worth reading.