Two fast-paced novellas offer a taste of Mexico, writes Peter Stupples.
THE TRANSMIGRATION OF BODIES and SIGNS PRECEDING THE END OF THE WORLD
Yuri Herrera
Text Publishing
By PETER STUPPLES
Yuri Herrera is a young writer in Spanish, hailing from Mexico and now teaching at the University of Tulane in New Orleans. He has published three novellas, only two of which have been translated into English so far. The novella, a story in prose of around a hundred pages, is unusual in English but common in other cultures. It has the virtue of focus. There is no space for multiple plot lines, diverting asides, the complex elaboration of character or descriptions of nature or place. It is a form cut to the chase.
The heroine of the earlier of the two novellas, Signs Preceding the End of the World (2009), is a tough, street-wise Mexican from the provinces who has worked in a telephone exchange. There is no cellphone coverage and Makina hears the voices from both sides of all conversations, on the line between two parties, sometimes acting as the reconciliator of sparring couples. The person in the middle, between one side and another, making connections, able to see, or at least articulate, two contrasted sides, is central to Herrara's stories.
Makina is sent by her mother from her Mexican village to find her brother, who left home to go "to the other side'', quite clearly to the United States. She also goes as the messenger of a local crime boss to another who has set up on "the other side''. They assist the precarious passage of Makina as she makes her way across the border, from the heat and colour of Mexico to the cold and colourless concrete of an American city. She keeps her eyes open and her wits about her. She fiercely fights off any encroachment of her person or deflection of her mission. Above all, she is aware of the degradation of those speaking her language, Spanish or the local and underworld patois of her region, in the US. The Latinos only furtively show their recognition of each other. They need to keep a lower than low profile. Desperation and degradation await them at every turn. Arrested with others, subjected to arbitrary cruelty, Makina pens a moving and defiant lament from "We, the dark, the short, the greasy, the shifty, the fat, the anemic. We the barbarians.'' Barbarians abound in both novellas, and are of all races, creeds, classes and genders. The novella concludes with a mystical passage as she is escorted by one who is either a friend or a foe to a room without windows, "like a sleepwalker's bedroom'', where she is given a new identity. "She understood with all her body and all her memory, she truly understood, and when everything in the world fell silent finally said to herself I'm ready.''
The second novella, The Transmigration of Bodies, written in 2013, is set in a provincial town in Mexico, where another "reconcilator'', called The Redeemer, more like a "fixer'', negotiates between two criminal gang leaders to restore to each the two youngsters, Baby Girl and Romeo, who have been killed by the opposing sides. The Redeemer is assisted by his hilariously tough sidekick Neeyanderthal. Despite the gruesomeness of the plot and the overarching menace of scarcely restrained violence and unconstrained grief, the erotic passages of the Redeemer's affair with his girlfriend Three Times Blonde are hilariously, laugh-out-loud funny, encouraging the reader to think, for once, just how ridiculous having sex (making love has no space in Hererra's prose) can look to an outsider.
Both novellas are fast-paced. The hero of one and the heroine of the other act, and have to act, fast. Thought would be a disaster. In The Transmigration of Bodies, the town is suffering from a mosquito-borne epidemic. All water is polluted and anyone venturing on to the streets is sure to die. The title of Signs Preceding the End of the World gives you more than a hint of the dystopian message carried by both novellas. To say that the barbarians are coming is too optimistic. They are all about us. Only Makina can be counted among the angels. Herrera knows what he is talking about and says it as it is, with power and without restraint.
Peter Stupples teaches at the Dunedin School of Art.
