EL PAÍS previews a fragment of La estación del swamp (Periférica publishers), Yuri Herrera’s latest novel. In the new book, the Mexican writer recreates former President Benito Juárez’s exile in New Orleans, a little-known stage in the politician’s life. First published in Spain, the work is now available in Mexico.
Two
The most important thing that happened in the following weeks were the drums, no, the most important thing that happened in the following weeks were the dances, no, the most important thing that happened in the following weeks were the concerts, no, the hippodrome a little bit that it was fun and it was important, but in another way, no, the most important thing that happened in the following weeks was the courtyard, maybe that was it, or maybe the most important thing that happened in it in the weeks that followed he met the canaille and learned what funk was, or more or less found out what Thisbee might or might not have done. What happened in the weeks that followed was that they no longer felt like weeks, sometimes they felt like minutes and the minutes sometimes felt like days, because the city began to shift slowly at first, then dizzily, from a commercial and commercial city to turn into a living animal that began to tremble as if shaking off drowsiness or fleas and then as if there was nothing more important in the world than dancing.
These sailors also brought music with them, not just the music inside, bleating and bleating loudly across a street parallel to the dyke, bleating and bleating about the little money they earn, he knew the word money, key if at all, and bleating and bleating about other things you didn’t understand; in front were a fiddler and a man with a military drum, playing with military talent, a pom-pom, pom-po-pom, regular, energetic, but the fiddler played dance pieces, fast and merry, which nobody danced because they went for a walk , except for him, who accompanied his fiddle and bobbed his head to the beat of the melody as if the couples were in there, spinning and jumping.
As they were walking, they saw that they had performed Meyerbeer’s Robert the Devil, an old opera, and Le Prophète at the Théâtre d’Orléans! which just opened four years ago in Paris, which as I said is yesterday. What a place this is, tapering off as if the swamp didn’t matter.
All the time they were making the streets new. Now that he and Pepe lived in the third district, in the house made out of a boat, he had to walk through the old quadrant to get to the Cabañas workshop. I learned to navigate through the holes in a street and the next day workers were there to fix it and before long it started peeling again and then being patched over and over and over again. The repair took more days than the roads held passable. At times the workers broke like exemplary stamps, more often they sat on the sidewalk to smoke, drink and sing. There was a lot of singing.
Cabañas didn’t let him touch the movable type, his job was to make the tabaches for announcements or proclamations or pamphlets or invitations and deliver them. On very rare occasions they gave him a coin for his services; he had to be content with what Cabañas paid him; Instead, between the trips through the quadrant (most deliveries were there or in the Anglos quarter, across the Channel) and the newspaper he could read in the workshop, he watched the city begin to glow despite the cold.
“Carnival,” Cabañas told him. It’s like everyone gets an itch that can only be treated by going insane.
He saw a man steal a dog, a dog when there were so many on the street, and its owner caught up with the thief and hit him with the metal handle of his stick while the dog did his part by tearing his leg off . He read about a woman who was arrested for stealing two corsets. corsets A town where they fight over corsets. He saw two men challenge each other and a third befriend them over a bottle of rum. He read about a man who was called to court to explain why he had a prisoner in his home that was not his property. He saw another lost child (he did not approach him).
One day, as he was returning to the house made out of a boat, he heard the drums. They weren’t like the wailing sailor’s military drum, not pom-pom, pompo-pom, but something like baaam-bam-bam-bam, baaam-bam-bam-bam, something like that; I didn’t know that language either, it was just clear that it was drums getting juice as if they were keyboards, a hypnotic baaam-bam-bam-bam changing attitude at the same time as one changes attitude when over talk about something and he doesn’t just say it.
He stood at a gentle crossroads for a while (the layout of the streets in this part of town was still more suggestion than law) trying to figure out where the drums were coming from. Baaam-bam-bam-bam. But, as in many parts, it sounded close all around.
Distracted by the rhythm in his head, he entered Thisbee’s house without pity, without knocking on the door. Thisbee was in her room with a woman, she was sitting on the bed and holding hands. Thisbee turned when he heard him enter. One second her eyes were blazing with nervousness, the next they were full of anger, and the next she was standing and closing the bedroom door.
They lost their money and lost sight of each other following the parades, some small, some small and crowded after a few blocks; a parade led them to where they saw their first fire, a business on the edge of the old quadrant that soon ignited two, three, four, seven houses around it; someone said in Spanish burn yours, wow, people have to get their money from somewhere, but what’s the fault of the neighbors; the parade scarcely ceased, the band of fiddles and flutes and a drum glittering against the flames and playing on behind the light which three captive men with torches gave them; sometimes something dripped on it, oil or other fuel, namely liquid fire, and the prisoners did not complain.
Another parade took them to Saint Louis Cemetery; there they went with Ocampo and Arriaga. Someone at the Hotel Conti had told Arriaga that this was the place for visitors and he didn’t understand why:
– Yes, they are similar to those of Mexico, although it is true that there are more tombs on the ground than buried.
Later he would find out why.
“The following is what you haven’t heard,” Ocampo said, “that visitors are coming to stay, and he also said wait for summer.
Next came the parade, which took all five of them to the circuit. This was a daytime parade, a band playing in a float and several masked men, the first masks they had seen, of birds, of reptiles, of non-existent animals.
As soon as they reached the circuit, they parted ways. This was like another river, but where happiness was only negotiated. There were white, bleached and colored creoles of varying elegance. Those who looked poorer were the most agitated, as in church; the richest played nonchalantly, as if fanning themselves.
For a while he watched the races, not so much interested in the result as in the muddy clatter of the horses, until he spotted Pepe, some papers in hand, clinging to one of the railings that marked the course. No no no no.
He approached him and made a gesture of tell me that’s not true.
“Twice, twice, I just win, what am I saying, I just deserve it,” said Pepe, adding with great conviction, “but just look at the next one, look at the one I bet on!”
He showed him the racing program, he had already seen them in the workshop and they had seemed like poems to him, the names of the horses listed one after the other. He saw where Pepe’s forefinger pointed triumphantly: La Mejicana. That’s what it said in Spanish with Jota.
Pepe did Eh, eh, eh how not to bet on him.
It was a single lap. The Mexican had number 2, she was reddish and slim. The horses bolted and immediately La Mejicana stepped forward alongside number ten, a huge and graceful animal but galloping with hatred. He heard Two cheer before realizing she was yelling run run run two two two ridiculously, but she didn’t care as neither of them would make much of taunts in the days that followed. La Mejicana snorted and ten damn ten snorted and the other horses watched the competition from afar fuck the losers yelled Pepe and ten and La Mejicana reached the last straight pushed each other snorted and La Mejicana shined to accelerate in the last few meters, but the ten, damn ten jumped rather than galloped furiously and narrowly won.
He felt a lot of sadness before he felt anger. The sadness of that defeat, which for a moment was the only defeat in the world, the sadness of loneliness that only losers know, the sadness of false hopes. Then came the anger.
“You didn’t bet everything, did you?”
Pepe looked at the horse like a ship that had set sail a second before its arrival. “No, not everything,” he said. Well, not all of yours, just mine, that’s all.
– A trumpet in a tavern, in a tavern, where was it seen? Said Arriaga. Trumpets are for concert halls.
“Or for the soldiers,” said Mata.
Finally they had entered one of the cafes. In theory it was just a cafe, but everyone was drunk and getting drunk. In the background of the establishment the band: clarinet, violin, one like a short guitar on one end and a long one on the other, and a trumpet. Marching Band said a sign behind them. They played almost without a break, it was not clear when one song ended and another began, they mixed dance melodies with excerpts from famous operas.
“That’s Verdi, that’s Mozart, that’s Rossini,” said Arriaga bitterly.
“I’d heard about that,” Ocampo said. It’s fashion.
– What is fashionable does not equate to what is good – said Mata.
“What they call good sometimes equates to what is dying,” Ocampo said.
Ship ‘The Swamp Station’
Author: Yuri Herrera
Title: The Swamp Station
Publisher: Periphery
Softcover, 192 pages / 280 Mexican pesos
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