by SUZAN STILL
What about The Ghosts? Are they based on actual persons, too?
Yes, in fact they are. Through unusual circumstances, I know men like The Ghosts. Some I met during my time teaching in prison. Others are involved in our government’s covert operations. I don’t share their politics, but I have tremendous admiration for their courage and expertise. They are men of action—tough, resilient, honorable to a certain code, and lethal. Yet, I know one, for example, who literally gave the skin off his back to a complete stranger, a little boy who had been badly burned. It is impossible for the average citizen to comprehend where these guys hang out in their heads. They live, basically, in an alternate reality, which is where I placed them, in Well In Time.
Calypso’s ride in the Cadillac is one of the wildest things I’ve ever read. Don’t tell me you have personal experience of that, too?
(Laughing) Yes, I’m afraid that’s drawn from my own experience. I’ve never laughed so hard, before or since. It was amazingly surreal.
The Children’s Crusade is a strange tale. Is it based in fact?
Oh yes! The Children’s Crusade actually happened in 1212. Modern scholars debate many of the details, but that the children, led by Stephen of Cloyes, walked the length of France in the expectation of marching to Jerusalem on the dried-up seabed, is a fact. I don’t know of any modern movement to compare with it, in which young people were totally swept up with passion, unless maybe it was the Beatles phenomenon.
Fire and fireplaces play a role in Well In Time. Can you say why your characters so often are placed before a fire?
Fire is primal. From time immemorial humans have gathered by the fire to tell stories, recount myths and histories, and make decisions. For the Huichol Indians, Grandfather Fire is the source of insight and vision, and for European peoples, time by the fireplace is time-out, when the business of the day is left behind and more philosophical or leisurely pursuits have a chance to surface.
I use fire in Well In Time to demarcate those moments when the protagonists’ lives are in transition, when new insights are revealed. There is, in a sense, a burning away of the old and a lighting of revelation of the new. There is safety, warmth and communion by a fire, as if the ancestors and the supernatural forces join us there, in moving forward the ongoing task of humanness.
The cave itself seems fantastic, running as it does between two river gorges.
The idea for the cave actually came from one of my prison students, who was from a place in Mexico south of Chihuahua. He told me that in his area there are cave systems running clear through the mountains, that were used to hide and move troops during the 1910 Revolution. And, of course, they’re used for drug smuggling, today.
The Copper Canyon area in Chihuahua is riddled with caves, many occupied by the Rarámuri, or Tarahumara as they’re commonly called. Whether any cave runs completely through the cliffs, I don’t know—but it’s certainly not an impossibility.
There are many metaphysical events in Well In Time. Are you using them as a literary device, as in magical realism, or more religiously or philosophically?
I personally have experienced many metaphysical events—visions, prophetic dreams, clairvoyance, apparitions, out-of-body experiences, ESP, spontaneous healing—a kind of smorgasbord of weird stuff. So I would say that I’m simply recognizing the existence of these alternate realms or dimensions by writing them into Well In Time. There’s nothing hypothetical or faith-based about it—it’s simply experiential. I do love magical realism, however, and I think it addresses the deep mysteries, the inexplicable, in a delightful way. If the reader wants to take those events in that vein, it’s fine with me!
I’m a firm believer that we’ve only scratched the surface of reality, and it intrigues me how these dimensions seem to flirt with us, ducking in and out of our perception in a game of metaphysical hide-and-seek. And I question: Does this flirtation have meaning for our lives, and if so, what is it? Well In Time is, in part, an exploration of those questions.
Talk about the violence perpetrated by the drug cartels in Mexico, and why you chose this as a theme in Well In Time.
It is clear to me that all the disruption and death caused by the drug mafias in Mexico are really to be laid at the feet of our own country. We’re the ones buying all these drugs, after all, to the tune of multibillions of dollars per year. Plus, our laws prohibiting use of recreational drugs drive up the price by diminishing availability, thereby fueling the competition among cartels for the illicit monies. Drug use is bad, but the violence and death caused by making drugs illegal is far worse.
There is a direct connection between US recreational drug use, laws prohibiting it, and the assassination and terror unleashed in Mexico. You could say that drug prohibition has been an informal way to impose American cultural colonization on our neighbor to the south. That’s not even to mention the allegations of CIA involvement in cocaine trafficking to the US, as a way of supporting counterinsurgency forces in Nicaragua and other places, as investigated by the US Senate Subcommittee on Narcotics and Terrorism.
The violence perpetrated by the cartels is so horrible as to be almost unspeakable. People are decapitated and dismembered, burned in barrels, disappeared. Their family members are murdered. No one is safe, and the fear becomes another type of murder. When I first started traveling in Mexico, years ago, it was safe to go out at all hours of the night on city streets, and people were open and friendly. Now, the streets are empty at night in some cities, and the happy din of culture is silenced. That kind of suppression through terror is murder of an entire culture.
Just days after one trip to Copper Canyon, a cartel attack took place just blocks away from the home where I was staying. You can see it on YouTube. I had passed through that intersection numerous times, during the days before the attack. It brought home how personal the problem can be.
In Well In Time, Javier trains his workers as a vigilante army, which is actually happening in Mexico, as people fight to retain their lands, homes and lives against encroaching cartels. It’s a deeply distressing situation, and at this point there’s no real answer, although legalizing recreational drugs in this country would certainly be a start.
What’s next for Suzan Still as a writer? What can your readers look forward to?
Well, I’m not making any promises, but I think I’m going to finish a book I’ve started, set in Malta. It’s very different from the adventures told in Well In Time and Fiesta of Smoke, or even in Commune of Women. I want to slow the pace of the narrative way down, and enjoy the deliciousness of each small increment of the male protagonist’s movement toward a new consciousness of women and the feminine. I have some delicious pitfalls prepared for him!
There are, however, five other partial manuscripts awaiting my attention, and one of them might tempt me away from the Malta book. And then, heaven forfend, there’s that moment when an entirely new idea insists itself on my awareness! I get about an idea a week for books, and I’d have to lead ten more lives to finish them all.
Is there anything more you’d like to add about Well In Time, before we close?
I wanted to present the terrible reality of drug violence in Mexico, and the suffering of the people because of it. There is much that we can do in this country to mitigate that, starting by simply educating ourselves to its reality, and to the causes underlying it. To this end, I would highly recommend John Gibler’s book, To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War. It’s tough to read, but it gives the real deal, that we don’t often get to hear.
I also want to say that it’s my hope that Well In Time will give readers hope, despite its dark passages. The world itself is going through a dark passage, right now, and it’s easy to become discouraged. I want this book to encourage people to look at the bigger picture, the one spanning not decades but millennia. In that context, humanity really is moving forward, becoming more just, better educated, more aware of itself as a force for good or evil.
And also in tha
t context, there are eternal verities that span cultures and centuries, that root humankind to earth in wholesome and loving ways. I think it’s safe to say that almost every person wants to be loved, to raise a family in safety and abundance, to practice their beliefs in freedom and without prejudicial treatment, to experience good health and sound education, and to eat and sleep in peace and plenty. We’re linked to one another and to past and successive generations by these simple and natural things. They’re things that we can seek for ourselves and our loved ones, and can help to provide for those lacking them. In that way, culture is stabilized, and with it, the lives of each one of us.
Javier and Calypso represent two people who love life and one another. They’re willing to struggle to improve not only their own lot in life, but that of others, as well. That’s a simple credo we can all take to heart. If Well In Time influences even one person to think and behave more positively and optimistically and generously, I will feel the book is a tremendous success!
Reading Group Questions
What would you consider to be the main theme or themes of Well In Time? If you were to recommend this book to someone else, how would you summarize it?
Which character do you prefer, and why? If you could go to lunch with one of these characters, which one would it be? What questions would you ask him or her, while dining? What topic would you most want to discuss with this person?
What did you know about the drug cartels in Mexico, before reading Well In Time? What did this book teach you, or how did it change your opinion or impression of that situation?
The narrative moves through both space and time, from present-day Paris to Chihuahua, from Europe to North Africa; from 2014 to prehistory. Which place or time did you find most interesting? Why?
The character of the Huichol shaman, and of Sa Tahuti, introduce an element of the unknown and metaphysical. Do you consider their world to be purely fictional? Have you ever known of or been influenced by unseen powers, or had contact with a shamanic culture?
What does the title, Well In Time, mean to you? What is its relation to themes of reality and illusion?
The characters of the Ghosts are based in real lives and activities. What do you think about international events being influenced by such people? Are their activities a brutal necessity, or an abhorrent evil? Are these men redeemable in your opinion? Is their shadow world necessary to our own peace and prosperity?
How do you imagine the lives of the characters, after the novel ends? What decisions will they make, and how have they been altered or transformed by their experiences?
Is there a moral to Well In Time? What have you learned about the world and about yourself, from experiencing this plunge into other times and other realities?
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To understand more about drug violence in Mexico, watch these YouTube videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpIyaIHsJbc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XiSnCt9fDc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amn4JqM4JEo
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To reach Suzan Still with questions, or to arrange a personal or telephone visit with your reading group, e-mail her at [email protected]. Visit her website at http://suzanstill.com, and her blog at SuzanStillCommune.blogspot.com.
More from the Author - Fiesta of Smoke
Over 30 years ago, I was traveling in Yucatan, in southern Mexico and had hired a guide to take me out to the ancient Mayan site of Uxmal. It was the first day of the rainy season, and I was holding my hand out the window, letting the warm drops run through my fingers. We in the VW van were jubilant that the long dry spell was finally broken, as we trundled along a narrow road that passed under a canopy of low, dusty trees.
Suddenly, we broke into a large, open meadow. Sitting in the grass, perhaps a hundred yards from the road, was a group of people, a hundred or more, all in traditional Mayan dress. Despite the rain, men, women, and children were sitting close together, immobile, all facing in the same direction. I asked my guide who they were, and why they were sitting there, and he told me, “They are from Guatemala. Their village has been destroyed by the government, and they have fled to Mexico. But they have nowhere to go. So they are sitting here.”
I live on the same land where I was born. I’ve never known anything but a stable home and its environs. The enormity of what had befallen these people swept over me. These were an agricultural people, who sustained themselves with their gardens and their coffee crops. Where would they go? How would they survive? My guide shrugged. There was no answer to their dilemma.
In that moment, Fiesta of Smoke was born. All my beliefs about and hopes for humanity were triggered. I began to understand how a person’s destiny is shaped by economic, social and political circumstances largely beyond the individual’s control. In a very real sense, Fiesta of Smoke is a working-through of my sense of outrage for the broken lives of innocent people, and a search for answers about how their lives might be redeemed, based on the question: how must a people proceed, when the government is unresponsive to their needs. Is revolution, then, the only remedy?
Of course, it didn’t hurt that I had a powerful love story brewing in my head at the same time. In the confluence of the two stories, I knew that I had found the tale that I wanted and needed to tell: fiesta, an important time of celebration, flirtation and togetherness in Mexico, intensifying to include protest and social upheaval, to become a Fiesta of Smoke.
Against a backdrop of rebellion and intrigue, love between Javier Carteña, commander of insurgent Mexican forces, and Calypso Searcy, an American novelist at the pinnacle of her career, sizzles with passion across a broad sweep of history. Encompassing time from the Conquest of the 1500s to the present, the story races across space as well, from the forests of Chiapas to the city of Paris. There, an international investigative reporter named Hill picks up the swiftly vanishing trail of Calypso’s disappearance, and unwittingly becomes involved in one of the great dramas of the twentieth century and one of the great love stories of any age.
Prologue
The story I am about to tell you is true, as I myself was a participant. Some parts come from the accounts of my contemporaries, as alive and vivid as a basket of eels. The rest, rising from the dust of centuries, is open to conjecture only to those who lack a certain kind of faith that we, who made this story by our doing, held as our deepest fiber. To participate with us, you must consider that illusion is the veriest truth and reality can play you false in a heartbeat. There is nothing more you need to know, except that in matters of this world–and no doubt the next–the only real thing is love.
. . . .
Sierra Madre Occidental, Chihuahua, Mexico
In a house ringed with guns, the couple is dancing. Courtyard walls condense fragrances flying on night wind sighing down the Sierra. Nectar and smoke lace with the smell of tortillas on the comal. From the open kitchen door a trapezoid of yellow light illumines, on a tilted chair, a blind guitarist whose gypsy rumba entwines the soft splatter of the fountain. White moths circle the musician’s head like spirits of inspired music.
The dancers scarcely move. He holds her close, his forearm across her back, her hand curled into his crooked wrist, the other warm on the back of his neck. He scoops her into himself, their hips pressing, slowly rotating to rhythm as one. He submerges himself in her hair, its scent of apples and sandalwood, brushes his cheek against its softness, and gazes into the darkness, alert for signs.
She rubs her cheek against the rough hand-woven cloth of his white shirt, breathes his essence–rich as newly-churned butter, sweet as vanilla, feral as a jaguar. It rises into her brain like a drug. Her head against his chest, she feels his heart pulsing powerfully, tuned like a guitar string to its own primal note. His whole being vibrates with what he senses: the closeness and surrender of her body, the sultry beat of the music, the luscious fragrances of the night, the invisible ambling of the guards on the walls, the inevitable approach of ruin.
Chapt
er 1
Calypso: Paris, 1992
Concentration kept down the fear. She focused on the tattoo of her orange snake pumps, the heel striking minutely before the tap of the sole, a rhythm difficult to maintain on the uneven cobbles of the quai. The full skirt of her yellow dress wrapped into her legs and flowed out behind her as she faced into the afternoon river wind. Walking quickly and confidently, it was her intention to look both purposeful and carefree.
She turned away from the bustle of rue Jacob into the tiny alleyway that cut through toward the Seine. It was her habit when leaving the library at the Sorbonne to pass that way, coming out near Pont Neuf. She enjoyed standing in one of the rounded bays, mid-span, leaning on the ornate railing after so many hours of reading, seeing nothing but the glossy water flowing silently down toward the sea.
She became aware of the follower when she hesitated, half-turned, before a shop window: dark hair, features hidden under a fedora, medium build, gray, nondescript suit. Because of him she had deviated from her accustomed route. She turned instead onto Quai des Augustins, with the Île de la Cité across the river channel, where there were always police around the Palais de Justice, even this late in the day. She could cross by Pont St.-Michel . . . but she did not. Instead, she continued down the river quays, hyper-alert to the presence behind her but wearing an instinctive veneer of calm. Her yellow skirt billowing around her calves in the autumnal wind, she arrived at Pont Saint-Louis having formulated a plan.