Tears of the Trufflepig: A Novel
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TWO HOURS LATER, Bellacosa arrived at the edge of the Ballí Desert, the land many people claimed God had yet to finish. Looking at the gold, glittered sand and blurry horizon, Bellacosa was sure that not only was the land finished, but God had already destroyed it many times over. That’s why the Aranaña disappeared, carrying the Trufflepigs they’d saved from their collective dream of the fiery Huixtepeltinico volcano—they escaped one destruction only to enter another.
Bellacosa left the old Jeep unlocked at the edge of the road and pocketed the keys. Carrying his Trufflepig, like the Aranaña people did so long ago, he pounded his chest with one fist and said, “I am Esteban Bellacosa. I am the King of Egypt,” and walked into the gushing neck of the Ballí Desert.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The first draft of Tears of the Trufflepig was written between October 6, 2014, and January 6, 2015, on an Olivetti Underwood Lettera 32. I am grateful to the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation for their generous 2014 award, which helped immensely during the execution of this project. Thank you to Sandra Cisneros and Roland G. Mazuca, and thank you to Gregg Barrios and Ben Olguín, for nominating me. Special thanks also to John Phillip Santos.
Much love to my mother, who is no longer with us but whose presence is always a guiding force; love to my father, down in South Texas, and to my sisters and extended family across all borders.
This project wouldn’t have been possible without the artists and friends who sustained me psychologically for many years, so thank you to Elva Baca, Fred Garcia, Jim Mendiola. Thank you to Chris “XPPR5dash9” H. for teaching me klezmer; to Palfloat, Rert Gallery, and all of Night Viking. Thanks to my brothas, Angel and Elias, and Carlito Vestweber.
Thanks to Joe B. III, Becky G., and the booksellers of Malvern Books, past and present.
Texas-Czech: Bohemian-Moravian Bands 1929–1959 was a great inspiration, particularly “Circling Pigeons Waltz” by John R. Baca’s Orchestra, along with “La Carta” by Violeta Parra and “La Noche de Mi Mal” by Chavela Vargas.
This book wouldn’t be in your hands without the vision and insight of Soumeya B. Roberts, for finding this query (scribbled, smudged, and torn, fluttering in a vast wasteland) and believing in it with such dedication, and also for helping figure out the riddle of it.
Majorly grateful for Jackson Howard really clicking with this story and taking a chance as my editor—what an incredible process it’s all been. Grateful for Emily Bell, Sean McDonald, Abby Kagan, Na Kim, Logan Hill, Chloe Texier-Rose, and everybody working at the MCD × FSG Originals laboratory.
And thank you, forever, to Taisia K.
ALSO BY FERNANDO A. FLORES
Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas
PRAISE FOR Tears of the Trufflepig
“Tears of the Trufflepig is the most engagingly original novel I’ve read in years. So phantasmagoric, fearlessly out there, and yet it feels like a revelation, piercingly true to gritty human experience and as wild as anything you might sense lurking in the borderland night. It’s the borderland speaking to you, a tale told from the future by the wiliest, funniest, most battle-scarred cabrón in the cantina.”
—FRANCISCO GOLDMAN, author of The Interior Circuit: A Mexico City Chronicle
“Tears of the Trufflepig is one of the most thrilling novels I’ve read in ages, a true wild original. By turns a surreal page-turner, a send-up of the consolidation of wealth, and an excavation of life on the border, this novel doesn’t bend genre: it explodes the precedents and creates something completely new. Fernando A. Flores is the kind of writer who will reinvigorate your faith in the power of literature.”
—LAURA VAN DEN BERG, author of The Third Hotel
“Fernando A. Flores has created a world that looks a lot like ours, but without the fat, without the self-complacency, and without the shadows that impede us from seeing the universal drama happening before our eyes. Tears of the Trufflepig is a beautiful story about the struggle between the profane and the sacred and what we can do about it.”
—YURI HERRERA, author of Signs Preceding the End of the World
“Dear reader, do you want to experience something wonderfully new, something dizzyingly wild, something utterly strange? Do you want to discover an imagination of beauty and humor and horror and majesty? Do you want to see the world afresh? If so, then Fernando A. Flores is for you. I know, for I have met the Trufflepig and I shall never be the same again.”
—EDWARD CAREY, author of Little
“I started to think this book was Juan Rulfo meets Philip K. Dick. But Fernando A. Flores smacked me in the head. He sidesteps clichés and expectations. We expect magical realism in a Latino novel as we have come to expect dystopian stories in a sci-fi novel, but his audacity is to ignore all expectations and shoot the moon in any way he chooses. Tears of the Trufflepig is thrilling. Flores has created his own genre.”
—LUIS ALBERTO URREA, author of The House of Broken Angels
“Fernando A. Flores’s wonderfully weird, myth-making Tears of the Trufflepig brings us to that hot land of absurdity—the U.S.-Mexico border—all the while stretching ideas of family, fantasy, and the fictions that create us. Flores is funny and fierce and not to be forgotten.”
—SAMANTHA HUNT, author of The Dark Dark
“With his striking debut novel, Fernando A. Flores has refashioned a world I thought I knew—the Valley, Texas, the strange alchemy of life on a border—into a grotesque yet familiar fever dream. His imagined future captures the truth of our uncanny now with frightening accuracy. Funny and tragic and ultimately compelling, Tears of the Trufflepig is a gorgeous and unsettling read.”
—MANUEL GONZALES, author of The Regional Office Is Under Attack!
“In Tears of the Trufflepig, the metaphor and actuality of the borderlands shimmer together into a vision of haptic, granular, and superbly controlled, convincing reality. A deep dream. A clear-eyed hallucination. Studded with the sweet delayed snap of the nonchalant reveal, cunning details of new worlds—demimondes, hellscapes, mythic lands—bloom naturally from scene to scene. Fernando A. Flores writes like a hard-boiled psychotropic angel.”
—EUGENE LIM, author of Dear Cyborgs
“Funny, futuristic, phenomenal, Fernando A. Flores is from another galaxy. Fasten your seat belt. You are in for a stupendous ride.”
—SANDRA CISNEROS, author of The House on Mango Street
A Note About the Author
Fernando A. Flores was born in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, and grew up in South Texas. You can sign up for email updates here.
MCD × FSG Originals
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
175 Varick Street, New York 10014
Copyright © 2019 by Fernando A. Flores
All rights reserved
First edition, 2019
E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-72014-8
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This work was made possible with a 2014 literary grant from the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Part 1
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Part 2
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Acknowledgments
Also by Fernando A. Flores
Praise for Tears of the Trufflepig
A Note About the Author
Copyright