by Yuri Herrera
Bookseller PRAISE FOR
The transmigration of bodies
“Yuri Herrera’s novels are like little lights in a vast darkness. I want to see whatever he shows me.”
Stephen Sparks, Green Apple Books, San Francisco, CA.
“This is as noir should be, written with all the grit and grime of hard-boiled crime and all the literary merit we’re beginning to expect from Herrera. Before the end he’ll have you asking how, in the shadow of anonymity, do you differentiate between the guilty and the innocent?”
Tom Harris, Mr B’s Emporium, Bath.
“Both hysterical and bleak, The Transmigration of Bodies builds an entire world in 100 pages. Herrera’s ability to express everything in so few words, his skill of merging the argot of the streets with the poetry of life is unrivaled. The world his characters inhabit is dangerous and urban, like a postcard sent from the ends of the earth. Reading his compact novels is both exhilarating and unforgettable.”
Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore, Houston, TX.
“A fabulous book full of low-life characters struggling to get by. It’s an everyday story of love, lust, disease and death. Indispensible.”
Matthew Geden, Waterstones Cork, Ireland.
Bookseller PRAISE FOR
Signs Preceding the End of the World
“Herrera gives us what all great literature should—poetic empathy for dire situations in a life more complex and dynamic than we imagined. And Other Stories gives us what all publishers should—access to this world. I always want more.”
Lance Edmonds, Posman Books
(Chelsea Market branch), New York, NY
“Several things occurred while I read Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera: I didn’t stop talking about it to other book people. When I finished it, I immediately flipped back to the beginning. And then, while waiting for the train, a bird pooped on me. I could go into the beautiful sentences, the structure, or the imagery. But really, a bird pooped on me—right on the shoulder, in the most obvious place—and I didn’t even notice until I put the book down.”
Jess Marquardt, Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, NY
“A dazzling little thing, containing so much more than the width of its spine should allow. I am in awe-filled love with its heroine: Makina is a vibrantly real presence in a shadowy world of constant threat, her voice perfectly rendered, her unflappable poise tested but never broken.”
Gayle Lazda, London Review Bookshop, London
First published in English translation in 2017 by And Other Stories
Sheffield – London – New Haven
www.andotherstories.org
Copyright © Yuri Herrera and Editorial Periférica, 2008
First published as Trabajos del reino in 2008
by Editorial Periférica, Madrid, Spain
English-language translation copyright © Lisa Dillman 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transported in any form by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book.
The right of Yuri Herrera to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or places is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-908276-92-6
eBook ISBN: 978-1-908276-93-3
Editor: Tara Tobler; Typesetting and eBook: Tetragon, London; Cover Design: Hannah Naughton.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This book was supported using public funding by Arts Council England.
Contents
Kingdom Cons
Kingdom Cons
He knew blood, and could see this man’s was different. Could see it in the way he filled the space, with no urgency and an all-knowing air, as though made of finer threads. Other blood. The man took a seat at a table and his attendants fanned out in a semicircle behind him.
Lobo admired him in the waning light of day that filtered in through a small window on the wall. He had never had these people close, but was sure he’d seen this scene before. The respect this man and his companions inspired in him had been set out somewhere, the sudden sense of importance he got on finding himself so close. He recognized the way the man sat, the lofty look, the glimmer. Then he saw the jewels that graced him and knew: he was a King.
The one time Lobo had gone to the pictures he saw a movie with a man like this: strong, sumptuous, dominating the things of the world. He was a King, and around him everything became meaningful. Men gave their lives for him, women gave birth for him; he protected and bestowed, and in the kingdom, through his grace, each and every subject had a precise place. But those accompanying this King were more than vassals. This was his Court.
Lobo felt envy, the bad kind first and the good kind after, because suddenly he saw that this was the most important day of his life. Never before had he been near one of those who gave life meaning, made it all tally up. Never even had the hope. Ever since his parents had brought him here from who knows where and then abandoned him to his fate, life had been a counting off of days of dust and sun.
A voice thick with phlegm distracted his gaze from the King: a drunk, ordering him to sing. Lobo complied, effortlessly at first, still trembling with excitement; but soon, from the same, he sang like never before, pulling words out from inside as though pronouncing them for the first time, as though overcome by the ecstasy of having happened upon them. He felt the King’s eyes on his back and the cantina fall silent; people put their dominoes facedown on tables to listen. He sang a song and the drunk demanded Another and then Another and Another and Another, and with each one Lobo sang more inspired, and the drunk got more drunk. At times he joined in, at times he spat into the sawdust and laughed with the old soak there with him. Finally he said Okay, and Lobo held out his hand. The drunk paid and Lobo saw it was short and held out his hand once more.
“That’s it, songbird. What I got left is for one more shot. Just thank your saints you got that much.”
Lobo was used to it. These things happened. And he was about to turn away in What Can You Do resignation, when he heard from behind:
“Pay the artist.”
Lobo turned to see the King holding the drunk in his gaze. He said it calm. It was a simple order, but the man didn’t know enough to stop.
“What artist?” he said. “Only thing I see here is this fool and I already paid him.”
“Don’t get smart, friend,” the King’s voice hardened. “Pay him and shut it.”
The drunk got up and staggered to the King’s table. His men went on alert, but the King sat unflustered. The drunk struggled to focus and then said:
“I know you. I heard what they say.”
“That a fact? And what do they say?”
The drunk laughed. Clumsily scratched a cheek.
“Nah. Not your business I’m talking about, everybody knows that… Talking about the other.”
And he laughed once more.
The King’s face clouded. He tilted his head back, got up. Signaled his entourage to stay put. Approached the drunk and grabbed his chin. The man tried to twist free: no luck. The King put his lips to the drunk’s ear and said:
“Actually, I don’t think you heard a thing. You know why? Because dead men have very poor hearing.”
The King put his gun to him as tho feeling the man’s gut, and fired. A simple shot. Nonchalant. The drunk opened his eyes wide, tried to steady himself on a t
able, slipped and fell. The King turned to the boozer with him.
“You got something to say too?”
The man snatched his hat and fled, hands high in a Didn’t See A Thing. The King bent over the corpse, rifled through a pocket, pulled out a wad of bills. He peeled off a few, handed them to Lobo, replaced the rest.
“Artist, take your due,” he said.
Lobo took the bills without looking down. He was staring at the King, drinking him in. And kept watching as the King signaled his crew and they filed slowly out of the cantina. Lobo gazed at the swinging doors. And thought that from now on there was a new reason why calendars were senseless: no date meant a thing besides this one. Because finally he’d found his place in the world. And because he’d heard something about a secret, which he damn well wanted to keep.
Dust and sun. Silence. A sorry house where no one exchanged words. His parents a couple of strays who got lost in the same corner, nothing to say to each other. That was why the words started to pile up, first in Lobo’s mouth and then in his hands. For him school was brief, a place where he sensed the harmony of letters, the rhythms that strung them together and split them apart. It was a private discovery, since he couldn’t see the lines on the chalkboard clearly and the teacher took him for a fool, and he confined himself to the solitude of his notebook. And it was out of sheer passion that he mastered the ways of syllables and accents, before being ordered to earn his keep on the street, offering rhymes in exchange for pity, for coins.
The street was hostile territory, a muffled struggle whose rules made no sense; he managed to endure it by repeating sweet refrains in his head and inhabiting the world through its public words: posters, papers sold on street corners, signs. These were his antidote to chaos. He’d stop on the sidewalk and run his eyes again and again over any random string of words to forget the fierce environs around him.
One day his father put the accordion in his hands. Coldly, as tho instructing him on how to unjam a door, he taught Lobo to combine the chord buttons on the left with the basses on the right, how the bellows trap and release air to shape the sounds.
“Now hold it good,” he said, “This is your bread.”
The next day his father went to the other side. They waited in vain. Then his mother crossed without so much as a promise of return. They left him the accordion so he could make his way in the cantinas, and it was there he learned that while boleros can get by with a sweet face, corridos require bravado and acting out the story as you sing. He also learned the following truths: Life is a matter of time and hardship. There is a God who says Deal with it, cause this is the way it is. And perhaps the most important: Steer clear of a man about to vomit.
He never took notice of the calendar. It seemed absurd because days were all alike: do the rounds of the tables, offer songs, hold out your hand, fill your pockets with change. Dates earned a name only when someone took pity on themselves or another by pulling out steel and shortening the wait. Or when Lobo discovered hairs cropping up or things getting bigger on his body at will. Or when pain hacksawed his skull and struck him down for hours at a time. Endings and eccentricities were the most notable way to order time. That was how he spent it.
That, and learning blood. He could detect its curdle in the parasites who said, Come, come little boy, and invited him into the corner; the way it congealed in the veins of fraidycats who smiled for no reason; the way it turned to water in the bodies of those who played the same heartache on the jukebox, over and over again; the way it dried out like a stone in lowlifes just aching to throw down.
Every night Lobo went back to the place where he boxed down, to stare at the cardboard and feel his words grow.
He started writing songs about stuff that happened to others. He knew nothing of love but he’d heard stories, so he’d mention it amid wisdom and proverbs, give it a beat, and sell it. But it was all imitation, a mirror held up to lives overheard. And tho he suspected there was more he could do with his songs, he didn’t know how to go deeper. It had all been said before. Why bother. All he could do was wait, carry on and wait. For what? A miracle.
It was exactly as he’d always envisioned palaces to be. Supported by columns, paintings and statues in every room, animal skins draped over sofas, gold doorknockers, a ceiling too high to touch. And more than that, it was people. So many people, striding down corridors. This way and that, attending to affairs or looking to shine. People from far and wide, from every corner of the earth, people from beyond the desert. Word of God there were even some who had seen the sea. And women who walked like leopards, and giant warriors, their faces decorated with scars; there were Indians and blacks; he actually saw a dwarf. Lobo sidled up to circles, he pricked up his ears, thirsting to learn. He heard tell of mountains, of jungles, of gulfs, of summits, in singsong accents entirely new to him: yesses like shesses, words with no esses, some whose tone soared up so high and sank so low it seemed each sentence was a journey: it was clear they were from nowhere near here.
He’d been out this way long ago, when still with his parents. But back then it was a dump, a hellhole of waste and infection. No way to know it would become a beacon. The royalty of a king determined these things: the man had settled among simple folk and turned the filth to splendor. Approached from afar, the Palace exploded from the edge of the desert in a vast pageantry of gardens, gates and walls. A gleaming city on the fringes of a city in squalor, a city that seemed to reproduce its misfortune on street after street. Here, the people who came and went thrust their shoulders back with the air of those who know that theirs is a prosperous dominion.
The Artist had to find a way to stay.
He’d learned there was to be a party that night, set off for the Palace, and played his only card.
“I come to sing for the chief.”
The guards glanced at him like a stray dog. Didn’t even open their mouths. But the Artist recognized one from the cantina encounter and could tell that the man recognized him, too.
“You saw he liked my songs. Let me sing for him and it’ll be good for you, watch.”
The guard wrinkled his brow a few seconds, as if imagining his fortune. Then he approached the Artist, shoved him to the wall and frisked. Satisfied that he was harmless, the guard said:
“He better like you.” Then dragged him in, and when the Artist was on his way, he warned, “Round here, you blow it, you’re fucked.”
Finding no good space for himself at the party he thought it better to wander among the guests. Until the music started and a sea of sombreros rose up, looking for action on the dance floor. Couples configured and the Artist found himself ricocheted from hips and elbows. Some fiesta, he thought. He’d scoot to one side and a couple would come at him in three quick steps, scoot to the other and the next one tripped him on a turn. Finally he managed to corner himself and take it in without getting in the way: so elegant, the sombreros; so suave, the violence with which those thighs pressed together; and so much gold, dripping off the guests.
Awestruck, the question took him by surprise.
“Like what you see, amigo?”
The Artist turned and saw a blondish man, weathered and elegant, who sat in his chair giving him a What Do You Think? face. He nodded. The man pointed to an empty seat beside him and outstretched his hand.
He said his name and then stressed:
“Jeweler. All the gold you see, I made. You?”
“I make songs,” the Artist replied. And no sooner was this out of his mouth than he sensed that he, too, could begin repeating, after his name: Artist, I make songs.
“Have a drink, amigo; plenty here to get you going.”
Yes, indeed, it was a banquet. On every table was whiskey, rum, brandy, tequila, beer, and plenty of sotol; no one could complain about the hospitality. Girls in black miniskirts topped glasses the moment they were raised, or if you wanted you could go over to a table and pour as much as you liked. The promise of carne asada
and roast kid hung in the air as well. A waitress put a beer in his hand, but he didn’t so much as touch it.
“Now don’t go thinking they paint it red here all the time,” said the Jeweler. “The King prefers kicking it with the people, in old saloons, but today’s a special day.”
He glanced side to side before leaning conspiratorially toward the Artist, tho everybody knew:
“Two kingpins coming in to make a deal and he’s got to treat them right, go all out.”
The Jeweler leaned back in his chair, smug, and the Artist once more nodded and looked around. He felt no envy for the gold-worked belt buckles and snakeskin boots the guests had on, tho they were dazzling; but the outfits the musicians on stage wore, those were something else: black and white spur-print shirts with leather fringe. There by the band, close enough to make requests, he spotted the King, majesty chiseled into his stone cheekbones. He was laughing raucously with the two Lords flanking him, both of whom might have given the impression of power, but no, not the force or commanding air of the King. There was one more man at their table, one who’d also been there at the cantina the other day. Less elegant than the Lords, or more round-the-way: no sombrero, no buckle.
“That’s the Top Dog,” said the Jeweler, seeing where he was looking. “The King’s right-hand man. Punk’s got balls, fearless as they come, but he’s cocky as shit.”
Better be, if he’s the Heir, the Artist thought.
“But don’t say I said so, amigo,” the Jeweler went on, “no gossip allowed. Way it works here is, you make nice with the pack, you’ll do fine. Like you and me right now, we just made friends, right?”
Something in the Jeweler’s tone put the Artist on edge, and now he did not nod. The Jeweler seemed to sense this and changed the subject. Told him he made jewelry only to order, whatever his clients wanted, and that’s what you should do, too, Artist, make everyone look good. The Artist was about to respond when the guard who’d let him in approached.