Space Invaders
Space Invaders
A Novel
Nona Fernández
Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer
Graywolf Press
Copyright © 2013 by Ampi Margini Literary Agency
English translation copyright © 2019 by Natasha Wimmer
The author and Graywolf Press have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify Graywolf Press at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
The translation of Space Invaders is published by arrangement with Ampi Margini Literary Agency and with the authorization of Nona Fernández and Alquimia Ediciones.
This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. Significant support has also been provided by Target, the McKnight Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Amazon Literary Partnership, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.
Published by Graywolf Press
250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401
All rights reserved.
www.graywolfpress.org
Published in the United States of America
ISBN 978-1-64445-007-9
Ebook ISBN 978-1-64445-106-9
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
First Graywolf Printing, 2019
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019931354
Cover design: Walter Green
Lettering: Camryn Mothersbaugh
Cover art: ESA (European Space Agency) / Hubble & NASA, RELICS
For Estrella González J.
I am at the mercy of this dream:
I know it’s just a dream
but I can’t escape it.
Georges Perec, La boutique obscure
Space Invaders
First Life
I
Santiago de Chile. 1980. A ten-year-old girl walks into an Avenida Matta school holding her father’s hand. A leather satchel hangs on one shoulder and the laces of her right shoe are undone. Outside, the sidewalk is strewn with the remains of a celebration: flyers, empty bottles, trash. The new constitution proposed by the military junta was approved by a broad majority. The school caretaker sweeps the litter from the gate, watching the girl’s father. The man takes off his officer’s cap to say good-bye to his daughter. He gives her a kiss on the cheek and whispers a few words in her ear. The girl smiles and heads down the hallway with one shoelace trailing on the tiles. In front of the statue of the Virgen del Carmen she kneels and kisses her thumb.
II
Sometimes we dream about her. From our far-flung mattresses in Puente Alto, La Florida, Estación Central, or San Miguel, from the dirty sheets that mark our current location, tucked away on cots that cradle our tired bodies that work and work; at night, and sometimes even during the day, we dream about her. The dreams are all different. Different as our minds, different as our memories, different as we are and as we’ve become. Amid all our oneiric differences, we agree that we see her as we each remember her, in our own way. Acosta says that in his dream she’s a girl, the way she was when we met her, in her school uniform, her hair pulled back in two long braids. Zúñiga says no, she never wore her hair in braids. He sees her face framed by long, thick black hair, hair that only he remembers, because Bustamante sees her another way, and so does Maldonado and so does Riquelme and so does Donoso, and each and every vision is different. Hairstyles and colors vary, her features never quite come into focus, shapes blur, and there’s no way to agree, because in dreams, as in memory, there is no agreement, nor should there be.
Fuenzalida dreams about the first time she saw her. When she wakes up she can’t remember what her hair looked like, so she doesn’t debate that with the rest of us, because, to Fuenzalida, what matters in dreams are voices, not hair. Fuenzalida dreams about many children’s voices whispering in the fifth-year room, and about the teacher taking attendance. Acosta—here, Bustamante—here. The voice of each child sounds exactly as it did back then, because even though voices fade with time, dreams have the power to bring them back to life. Donoso—here, Fuenzalida—here. And then it’s her turn, her name uttered from beneath the teacher’s black mustache. González, we hear in the classroom; and from the desk in the very back row where she sits alone, the new pupil—or maybe not so new—says here. It’s her. Nothing else matters, not the style of her hair, the color of her skin or her eyes. Everything is relative except for the sound of her voice, because in dreams, according to Fuenzalida, voices are like fingerprints. González’s voice seeps into us from Fuenzalida’s dreams, invading our own visions, our own versions of González, settling in and keeping us company night after night. Some nights it visits Acosta’s pillow, or Donoso’s torn sheets. And so the nightly rounds are a never-ending roll call, an eternal head count that disturbs our peaceful sleep. Years have passed. Too many. Our mattresses, like our lives, have been scattered around the city, have drifted apart. What has become of each of us? It’s a mystery that scarcely needs solving. We share dreams from afar. Or one dream, at least, embroidered in white thread on the bib of a checkered school smock: Estrella González.
III
They’ve arranged us in a long single file line down the middle of the schoolyard. Next to us is another long line, and then another, and another. We form a perfect square, a kind of game board. We’re pieces in a game, but we don’t know what it’s called. We spread out, each of us resting a right arm on the shoulder of the classmate ahead to mark the perfect distance between us. Our uniforms neat. Top button of the shirt fastened, tie knotted, dark jumper below the knee, blue socks pulled up, pants perfectly ironed, school crest sewn on at the proper chest height, no threads dangling, shoes freshly shined. Displaying clean fingernails, ringless hands, bright faces, hair brushed into submission. Singing the national anthem every Monday first thing, each according to their ability, in piercing off-key voices, loud and almost bellowing voices enthusiastically repeating the chorus, as up front one of us raises the Chilean flag from where it rests in somebody else’s arms. The little star of white cloth rising up, up, up till it touches the sky, the flag finally at the top of the staff, rippling over our heads in time to our singing as we stare up at it from the shelter of its dark shadow.
IV
Maldonado dreams about letters. They’re old letters in the handwriting of ten-year-old girls. Letters that she and González used to mail to each other, as if they didn’t see each other in the classroom every day, as if they were as far apart then as they are now. González’s spelling isn’t good, says Maldonado, but her writing is careful, neat. She’s a different person in her letters, not the shy girl in the back row of the classroom. Maldonado’s dreams are of reading each of these letters. Dreams built of words, assembled from letters and sentences. Names written in blue ball-point pen, addresses and signatures, and sincerely, and yours truly, and hugs, and write back soon, friends forever, swear you’ll never forget me.
Fuenzalida says everybody dreams in their own way. So while she hears voices, and others see only pictures, Maldonado has every right to dreams constructed out of words. Each brick is a verb, an article, an adjective, and the frame goes up, stairs are built, the dream becomes a tall tunnel connecting heaven and hell. Maldonado dreams blue words in girls’ handwriting. The most frequently repeated word is a name. It’s written on the flap of the envelope and at the end
of each letter. Beside it is the drawing of an inked-in star, like a kind of brand, an emblem fallen from some flag.
Dear Friend, hello! How are you and your family? Good, I hope. Because I have a cold and some other problems. Remember the letter you sent me? I never wrote back but I have to, because if I don’t I’m not a good friend, and I think we’re friends although sometimes in class you act like you don’t know me. You’re somebody I can trust. I have so much to tell you you won’t believe it. Secret things, things I can’t tell anybody except you, things I haven’t even said or written or thought. Lots of things. Things that have nothing to do with Zúñiga or people teasing me about him. I don’t care about him. The things I have to tell you are other things. More important things, secret things. But this paper is tiny and my writing is so big and fat. My dad says I have to write smaller and stay on the lines but the lines are so thin they’re hard to see. If I listened to my dad I could write more but since I can’t write small and stay on the tiny little lines I have to write less. I should try to obey my dad. He deserves to be obeyed, for me to obey him. Now he’s at the National Police Hospital. Did you know that my dad had a work accident? Nobody at school knows. He’s had lots of operations. That’s why I have to try to write smaller like he says. And my mom has to stay in bed too, but at home. It’s because she’s going to have a baby, but this time is different. You know how my little brother Rodrigo died last year. He was only a year younger than me, so when I turn eleven he would have been ten. That’s why mom and dad and I really want a new little brother. I think he’ll be my baby too in a way. Do you want to have kids? When I’m grown up I want to have lots. I’m going to be a mom with lots of kids and what happened with Rodrigo won’t happen to any of them. The Virgin will keep them safe. I have faith in her. And she’ll keep my mom and the baby safe too. So I have to be good, that’s just what I have to do. I have to finish my homework and try to write smaller. I hope you get good grades on all our exams. Did you know that August 12 was my dad’s birthday? Well now I have to end this letter because if I don’t I’ll have to think of something else to say and I don’t know what else to say and this paper is small and my writing is big and fat and there’s no more room.
Bye, Maldonado, my friend.
I hope you like my tiny little letter.
Write back soon.
Your classmate,
P.S. What you said about Zúñiga is true. But I only like his hair and his eyes, because the rest of him is dark and ugly.
V
Riquelme dreams of spare hands. The hands from González’s house. Riquelme is the only one of us who ever went there, so his dreams are like testimony. Riquelme says that the house was big and dark and full of closed doors. Behind one of the doors was González’s brother’s room. You couldn’t go in there. Behind two other doors on the second floor, up a staircase with no railing, were González’s bedroom and her parents’ bedroom. You could go in there, but he didn’t. No one asked him to. Downstairs there was a dining room and a living room and a den with a TV and an Atari set that used to belong to González’s brother but that now belonged to González and was okay to use. Riquelme and González played Space Invaders for hour after hour. The green glow-in-the-dark bullets of the earthlings’ cannons scudded up the screen until they hit some alien. The little Martians descended in blocks, in perfect formation, shooting their projectiles, waving their octopus or squid tentacles, but González and Riquelme had superpowers, and the aliens always ended up exploding. Ten points for each Martian in the first row, twenty for the ones in the second row, and forty for the ones in the back row. And when the last one died, when the screen was blank, another alien army appeared from the sky, ready to keep fighting. They gave up one life to combat, then another, and another, in a cycle of endless slaughter. Projectiles flew back and forth. González and Riquelme killed as many Martians as they could, but despite their efforts, they couldn’t match the record that González’s brother had set a year ago. It was a high score, tough to beat. No matter how hard they tried that afternoon in their battle against the aliens, they couldn’t break the record.
After a while González’s mother, Doña González, brought them milk and said they had to do their homework. They had a history assignment on the War of the Pacific, Chile’s never-ending battle with Peru and Bolivia. González and Riquelme sat at the table in the dining room and got to work. Riquelme doesn’t remember much about what they did, but he does remember the sopapillas with powdered sugar that Doña González brought them and the photograph of González’s brother hanging on the wall. According to Riquelme, González’s brother looked a lot like González. Like a male copy of her. Riquelme wanted to ask what had happened to him, but he was afraid to. Hanging next to the picture of González’s brother were some medals with tricolor ribbons, the kind won by athletes or soldiers. There were copper plaques and there were cloth and metal mini flags, lots of them. Flags that might be used in an assignment about the War of the Pacific, or to conquer some Martian territory.
That’s what Riquelme was doing, looking at González’s brother and the medals hanging on the wall, when González’s father, Don González, came in. Riquelme had never met him before. Few of us had. He was a big man in uniform who was always traveling and could occasionally be seen dropping González off at school in the morning. That afternoon—as usual, most likely—Don González kissed his wife and his daughter and gave Riquelme a friendly nod. Then, after he had greeted everyone and as if it were something he did every day, like someone loosening his tie and settling in for the evening, Don González sat in a chair and took off his left hand. It was a wooden hand, like the peg leg of a pirate. There was a black leather glove on it.
González’s mother saw that Riquelme was uncomfortable. Quickly she ushered her husband and his wooden hand upstairs. González explained to Riquelme that there had been a terrible accident and that that was how her father had lost his left hand. Another national police officer happened to pick up a bomb, and somehow the pin got pulled. To save the officer’s life, Don González did something, nobody knows exactly what, but he grabbed the bomb with his left hand, poor little hand, and tried to throw it far away, and before he could, the bomb went off. Every night when he got home, he took off the prosthesis that he wore where his poor little hand should be, because prostheses pinch and you can’t wear them for too long. He had lots of them, she said, and he kept them in a special cabinet. All made out of wood, either beech or larch, and all made to his precise measurements, so that he wouldn’t miss his left hand, poor little hand.
Riquelme never went back to González’s house. The thought of those orthopedic hands terrified him. The few times he and González were partners on an assignment, he would invite her to his apartment, where hands didn’t come off bodies and children didn’t hang on the wall. The rumor spread around the school like a kind of myth, and no one, absolutely no one, dared to go over to her house for fear of Don González’s spare hands. Not even Maldonado, who exchanged letters with González, and who claimed to be her best friend. People said that there were steel hands and silver hands and bronze hands. Someone said that Don González had a hand that could shoot bullets and another hand that could stab you, because knives popped out of it. Razor-sharp fingers, 2.5-caliber fingernails, cannon hands or guillotine hands.
Now Riquelme dreams about that never-seen cabinet full of prostheses and about a boy playing with them, a boy he never met. The boy opens the doors of the cabinet and shows him the orthopedic hands lined up one after the other, orderly as an arsenal. They’re glow-in-the-dark green, like the Space Invaders bullets. The boy gives a command and the hands obey him like trained beasts. Riquelme feels them exit the cabinet and come after him. They menace him. They chase him. They advance like an army of earthlings on the hunt for some alien.
VI
We button our smocks, checkered for girls and tan for boys. One button after the other, carefully, so that no buttonhole is missed, the same action six times,
from the neckline at the top to the hem at the bottom. When we’re ready, we take our places next to our wooden desks. We stand one after the other in a long line across the classroom. Next to ours is another long line, and another, and another. We are multiple columns forming a perfect square, a kind of game board. With our right hands, we cross ourselves at the same time, looking up at the picture of the Virgen del Carmen that hangs over the board, directly above our heads. It’s a small painting, slightly faded, but it’s the lady with her golden crown and a tricolor sash across her chest, with her child in her arms, the little baby Jesus. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we recite a prayer to the Virgin to begin the day and we pray for the poorest of the poor, the wretched, the homeless, for those who aren’t able to go to school like we do. Voices in unison raised in a prayer identical to yesterday’s and the day before yesterday’s and tomorrow’s. Virgencita, our mother, and mother of the Savior, lead us on a path of peace, on a path free of fears and dangers, through a life of light and fulfillment, far from the hardships and terrors of the world. Forsake us not in doubt, heavenly mother, abandon us not in suffering, and grant us the joy of your eternal kingdom, sweet mother, blessed in all things, forever and ever. Amen. A kiss on the thumb in conclusion and then we take our wooden seats to begin whatever class it is, under the protection of the Virgin, who watches us from on high. She always watches us from on high. Her glass eyes spying on us over our neatly combed heads.
VII
We’re in a ship made of colored paper. It’s a big ship, with a crew of thirty-four sailors, who are us, all under the command of an us, who is Zúñiga, the captain. His mother has painted a black beard on him with burnt cork and dressed him in a sailor suit, which is just his blue school coat trimmed with yellow construction paper. Music blares from a record player as González, who is the tallest of the sailors, who are us, holds the Chilean flag and waves it in time to the music. Zúñiga thinks she looks pretty dressed like a man. She has burnt-cork whiskers too, and a little white sailor hat, like we all do. Zúñiga is looking at her. We all notice, except for her. Gentlemen, we are outmatched, says our captain and we gaze at him with patriotic eyes. But be brave and take heart. Our flag has never fallen in the face of the enemy and I hope that this day will be no different. While I live, the flag will fly, and if I die, my officers know their duty. Long live Chile, damn it, concludes Zúñiga, and he sets out to board the enemy ship.
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