The Sleeping World

by Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes

  On the sand that final night, Alexis could just see the outline of the bridge where we played years ago. We would race to the edge and dare to take one step farther out onto the crumbling wood, the river rushing brown and black beneath us. If Alexis looked hard enough, he could see my silhouette when I was still taller than he was, putting my hand on his shoulder and pulling him away from the edge of the bridge. It might have been something he imagined, that never happened, but even though it was dark and he was on his knees and men’s legs surrounded him, blocking everything but the sand and their black boots shifting in it, he could see it anyway, me catching him.

  But it was no longer the bridge he saw. It was sand, it was rock, it was a leather heel at his neck, and a gun. He tried to explain, he knew nothing, had done nothing, would say nothing, but the men didn’t speak. There was nothing to explain. No questions to ask. It was the cold of the gun making a perfect circle at his temple, but it was not the gun. It was the hand pulling his hair and his neck stretched back, mirroring the river curving, and a knife above him and moving across. They pulled his head farther back, he could see the bridge and the cathedral golden with floodlights and the river black and finally, finally the stars. What had been following him found him after so long. But he looked through it straight into my eyes, my face lit with water.

  I opened my mouth to speak, as I knew he had, to say the words I’d come to say, to beg him for forgiveness. But there was no air left. Instead I pressed into his hand gripping my arm, letting it vise to my skin, welding me to him in a way that could never be undone, anchoring me, forever.

  Above the water, Mosca’s abuela knelt before her shrine. She stared up at the carved faces of Saint Judas Tadeo, for helpless causes, Saint Juan de Sahagún, for the city that was still Mosca’s home, and Saint Teresa de Ávila, protector of writers, those with headaches, and those who feel God press down on their skin to wake with bruises. On the shrine was a wooden box that had once held nuns’ marzipan, filled with stacks of funeral cards—a saint on the front, the dead’s dates and a chosen prayer on the back. The box was full of cards: the abuela’s children, her husband, her grandson. On the shrine was Mosca’s penknife that her abuela had found on the kitchen table the night she didn’t return. Every week she dusted Mosca’s room, wiped down the desk, and straightened the blanket. Though no one had slept there in months, there was still old skin drifting down through the air to cover and re-cover the surfaces of the room. Mosca had once told her that dust is mostly that, human skin. Though it made her shiver and think she’d gone mad, Mosca’s abuela collected the dust on her rag and shook it into the marzipan box. She used the same cloth to dust her saints as to clean Mosca’s room because she believed that the saints, too, were not really dead. Beneath Mosca’s bed was a box she would not touch for the same reasons she polished her saints with the rag from Mosca’s room, for the same reasons she believed that dead wood would bring life to dead skin. She believed her prayers could bring Mosca back.

  Beneath the water, objects floated by me. But I no longer saw divided rooms and mountain pools. Just wires, trash, metal rusting whole. I passed something dead—a body whitened by salt. It didn’t look how Alexis had looked, unmarred, speaking, and showing me what I could not see above the water. The body was drifting with the current, skin glowing green, fish trailing its eyes and too-wide mouth. I should not be here. I followed a thick brown cloud to a slash on my arm. The blood billowed into the water like squid ink. But I didn’t have those tendril legs that can move without effort, that seem to be made of air. I should not be here. I clasped my arm to slow the blood and headed toward the lights reflecting on the surface of the water. But the surface was too far. I was paper weighted only in names and faces. No matter how I flailed, I could no longer stop my descent. I was sinking.

  Above the water, La Canaria whispered and her breath fogged white around her. She said, Marco is a chicken and Grito is a weasel and Mosca is a fucking pussy. She said, I am not a bird or an island but a fish getting eaten from the inside and the out. She didn’t know why she’d lied to Mosca except that Mosca deserved a lie for all of hers. Betrayal is not so easy as what you didn’t do or a weight growing inside you don’t want. Betrayal is something else. It runs you red.

  La Canaria feared her baby would be only air. Air would be enough or a total lack of it, boiling up from the inside. If she had to guess, she’d say it was Grito. Drowning inside her for months. She lied only because it was the words Mosca needed. It was the words that Marco wouldn’t say, that Grito slipping under the water had let loose inside of them. And they might have been true. Alexis had been growing inside her, too, for so long, growing larger each day she refused to name the lack he occupied. Name him a loss she could not forget.

  La Canaria leaned against the bridge overlooking the dam. There was no one beside her. She wanted to watch something burn. She had sent everyone away. There were no bodies to be found. She would get on a boat or a plane and go to a new land, and this thing inside her would burst from the pressure. Seep out in rolls of paper ribbons yellow and black or fade into steam. Or it would be solid and squirming. And because it was hers and only hers, she would love it.

  But no, it would not wait. There was water beneath her, water not from the dam but from deep inside her. It was coming. They were all hers. Grito and Marco and Mosca and Alexis. They were all growing inside her, and she made them hers. La Canaria pulled them out of her wet body one by one, out of the red of her dark room. She reached down to pull Mosca from the water and brought the rest behind her. She held them up to the light.

  She could go anywhere she wanted.

  Above the water, Marco stood on the sand, looking for a break in the waves. Behind him, the Carnival crowds screamed and cheered, making up new words to old songs, forgetting and remembering in one breath, throwing their heads back to dance against the stars. He saw letters he recognized on the breaker wall, though they had faded. He reached his hand to touch the spray-painted tag: A L X S. His fingertips traced the long tail of the X until it broke off where the wall ended and he touched only air. Then he sat on the edge of the water, dug his hands into the sand until they were drenched, and repeated Mosca’s name. He didn’t know how long he had been sitting, his voice rubbed raw into a whisper, when he saw something break through the water.

  He swam out to it and saw Mosca, dark hair trailing, skin reflecting the moonlight, body limp but buoyed somehow. He saw that her mouth was just above the surface of the water and she was gasping for air. Marco wrapped his arm around her and swam toward the shore.

  CASASROJAS, CASTILE-LEÓN

  1978

  Spring again, just before dawn, and the plaza is full of students. Though the night is almost over, they are still celebrating passing their exams and still spilling cava on the cobblestones to toast those who’ve graduated. We skirt the plaza and walk straight toward the philology library. The windows are dark. It’s closed, but what I want right now is not inside. I find the spot on the wall of the library where I was going to write my initials when I graduated. The same spot I pointed out to Alexis when we were young, the spot that is visible from the train leaving the city. I climb up the huge slabs of golden stone, turning pink with the sunrise. The cut on my arm still aches. It is healing into bright pink slashes, the memory of a hand printed deep into my skin. It smells of salt and washed-up kelp. I prick my finger with a piece of glass I found by the shore. Then I press hard into the slash on my arm. I want the blood from the scar to be the blood that comes out of my finger. I press my hand down next to all the other signatures. But I don’t write. The blood courses out of me and settles deep in the stone, wetting what was once dirt, marking it as long as it can.

  Marco helps me down from the library’s walls and we walk through Casasrojas. The students stumble out of bars, lift their bottles to the men sweeping the cobblestones and fixing the flickering lights underneath the bridges. Calle Grillo is packed. Men and women too o
ld to be out this late walk arm in arm. The stones are wet from someone’s laundry. Soap bubbles circle the sewage pipes. Marco will go to Grito’s abuela. He will not be able to explain, but he will speak. For now, he stays outside and I climb the stairs to my abuela’s apartment.

  * * *

  The elections have come and gone, and they are writing a constitution. The price of democracy is that there will be no trials and everyone will forget: the piles of bodies, the disappeared, what both sides did in a war that wouldn’t end.

  We went to the bridge beside the cathedral. The water rushed in dark shapes. The sand was littered with plastic bags and drowned milk cartons. Broken gold chain-links glittered up through the sand. At the edge of the bridge, my toes curled around the decaying railroad tracks. I took off Alexis’s medallion and the rope necklace wrapped around La Canaria’s bullet. As they fell, the water reflected them back at me, larger and larger, until they disappeared, intertwined, into its depths. The river will keep them safer than I can.

  At the bridge, I took Marco’s hand. We’d both failed. The betrayal complete. A body fully formed and buried in the waters beneath our skin, moving through us, whole and breathing. What we’d done is big enough to live in. It is big enough to hold us both.

  * * *

  In my room is the box Alexis hid, what I once refused. I will pull it out from under my bed. I will place the photo of my parents on my abuela’s shrine. And the rest, the others, their strained necks and bound hands, the lists of names, murdered and murderer, Marco and I will take to the print shop beneath the philology library. There, where I studied for hours, where I learned that anyone can die, we will strike up the machines and make the names repeat. The grays and blacks will spark to yellow and orange, a river of faces, tongues alive and crackling, blazing through the city—because I have done my forgetting. I don’t want to anymore.

  * * *

  I come to the top of the stairs. Through the door, I hear my abuela moving, her hands already turning the lock. I will not need to speak when she opens the door. The water is written on me, its baptism soaking everything I touch. It says I know who’s alive and who isn’t. I know just who I am bringing home.

  Acknowledgments

  Massive, planet-imploding thanks:

  To Reginald McKnight, for believing passionately in this book and for continuing to strengthen my trust in my work.

  To Elisabeth Sheffield, for being one of the earliest and deepest readers.

  To my wonderful agent, Ethan Bassoff, for making the book better and for fighting for me.

  To everyone at Touchstone, especially my editor, Etinosa ­Agbonlahor, for your keen eye, intelligence, and brilliant problem-­solving skills.

  To my friends and readers in Boulder, the Sunday Salon, especially: Caroline Davidson, Nick Kimbro, Shannon Douglas Kimbro, Vanessa Angelica Villareal, and Rachel Levy. For the support I received from the University of Colorado-Boulder, and a huge thanks to my teachers there, especially: Stephen Graham Jones, Jeffrey DeShell, Karen Jacobs, and Julie Carr.

  To my artist family in Athens, in you I’ve found friendship and home, especially Magdalena Zurawski, Shamala Gallagher, Lindsay Tigue, Gina Abelkop, Adam Gardner, Kristen Gleason, Jenny Gropp, and Prosper Hedges. Thank you to the University of Georgia for the support I received while editing this book.

  To all the kind people I stayed with in Europe, who bear no resemblance to any unpleasant characters found here, though they might recognize their homes and surroundings. To my teachers and mentors, especially at Brown and Interlochen.

  To my dear friends stretched across the time zones, to Jason, and to the ladies of 168 Williams.

  To my family in Wisconsin and Miami: I love you deeply and keep you close to my heart.

  To my parents, for everything.

  To Thibault, for the Church of Art and Love.

  And to Daniel, who I am always looking for, and always finding.

  Touchstone Reading Group Guide

  The Sleeping World

  Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes

  This reading group guide for The Sleeping World includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

  For Discussion

  1.Discuss your theories about the significance of the title, The Sleeping World. Why do you think the author chose it?

  2.Mosca and her friends love punk music such as Patti Smith and the Ramones. Why do you think they are drawn to punk?

  3.Reflecting on her abuela’s experiences after the war and the teachings of those who have come before her, Mosca declares: “Our tongue the tongues of murderers. The general didn’t come from nowhere.” Do you agree with Mosca that Franco’s regime of oppression was inevitable and that it was fostered by Spain’s history of genocide and imperialism toward other nations?

  4.Each of the main characters has a defining nickname: Mosca (Fly), La Canaria (the Canary), Grito (Scream). Discuss the author’s choice in giving nontraditional, distinctive names, and the symbolism behind them.

  5.Why do you think Mosca is so intent on hiding her true reason for wanting to go to Paris? How do you think Marco and La Canaria would have reacted had she been open with them?

  6.Mosca’s abuela remembers the devastation of the war. She recalls that “their means of breaking you [were] very specific.” How does that time of upheaval compare to Mosca’s generation’s?

  7.How does Fuentes’s retelling of student activism and unrest in Spain in 1977 compare to the political unrest of among young people today? How much is universal in these upheavals throughout history?

  8.Mosca asserts that it is “better to stay numb than to know the details of your frostbite.” Do you agree with this sentiment?

  9.What do you think La Canaria wants and how does that change throughout her journey with the others?

  10.The final pages of the novel contain several passages that repeat the imagery of being “beneath the water,” with several references to purification, the tide, waves, sinking, drowning, and baptism. Why did the author make this choice? Consider other places where water is significant in the narrative.

  A Conversation with Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes

  What inspired you to write about this time and place?

  I wanted to study abroad in Cuba, where my father was born, but at the time it wasn’t possible. Any other Latin American country felt like a betrayal and I’ve always been a Europhile (for mixed and dubious reasons) so I chose Spain. The rest wasn’t really a choice. The first chapter came years later and almost whole cloth—complete with setting and time period. When I slow down my own intuition, I think Spain during the transition was the perfect mix of close and far. The time was separate enough from me to imagine a new narrative into it and yet it spoke of both current political realities and my own emotional landscape. My younger brother had just passed away from a drug overdose. Mosca’s journey was, of course, my own: through numbness and fear, into the deep recesses of longing. I wrote into my grief as the only way I could experience or imagine it. I wrote to keep both him and myself alive.

  The Sleeping World is filled with strong, distinctive young characters. Why did you choose Mosca’s point of view to tell this story in particular?

  The Sleeping World is Mosca’s story. It wouldn’t be possible from any other perspective. She is the character most connected to me emotionally and a way for me to move into grief. I can’t imagine the novel from any other [perspective] than a female perspective. The only other character who could narrate would be La Canaria. That would be an entirely different book. A very interesting one.

  How much research went into
your process, and was it difficult to divide time between analytical research and more creative inspiration?

  Luckily much of the research had happened years before the writing started so there was time for the information and facts used to structure the narrative to sink in and become less conscious. I studied at the University of Salamanca in 2007—and what became research for The Sleeping World was at the time just me living and going to school: staying up late, drinking wine in parks, camping in sheep pastures, and not doing much actual studying for the first time in my life. I read different pre- and postwar Spanish authors [and] Spanish history, and met people who had lived through the transition. Many of the young Spaniards I hung out with then were similar aesthetically and politically to Mosca’s friends. They had a punk sense of fashion, organized freegan potlucks, were frustrated by the older conservative citizens, drank cheap beer, etc. They had a wildness and desperation to them that I was attracted to—perhaps I’m romanticizing, but that’s how it felt. I drew on my actual experience for much of the texture of the novel.

  So much of writing a novel is problem solving, and so much of problem solving is movement into instinct. Especially with a character like Mosca, who is so guarded and thoughtful—she’s very careful with her words—I have to balance letting her speak alongside my own sense of the narrative, the symbolism, the politics. The more official research came after the first draft but was also a creative act—I was following hunches, snatches of sentences, moods, and trusting I would find that the things I’d written had in fact happened, or something that bore an emotional resemblance to them had.