Chaos, A Fable Read online

  PRAISE FOR RODRIGO REY ROSA

  “[Rodrigo] Rey Rosa is the consummate master, the best of my generation, which happens to include many excellent short-story writers.”

  —Roberto Bolaño

  FOR THE AFRICAN SHORE, TRANSLATED BY JEFFREY GRAY

  “The African Shore felt very much to us like a story that only Rey Rosa could have told, a small, perfectly cut jewel that we can stare into endlessly. It is emblematic of the very rich exchange between Rey Rosa’s native Guatemala and the Morocco in which he lived for a decade, and its minimalist aesthetic points us toward an interesting new direction for Latin American literature to follow in the new century.”

  ―Best Translated Book Award judges, 2014

  “I read Rodrigo Rey Rosa’s The African Shore in a single night. It is a slim volume, only 136 pages, but, more importantly, Rey Rosa is one of the most economical writers I’ve encountered in a long time. The exactitude and concise beauty of his prose illustrates not only what the characters do, but above all, what they see and what they perceive.”

  ―Justin Alvarez, Paris Review

  “Bolaño wrote that Rey Rosa ‘is the most rigorous writer of my generation, the most transparent, the one who knows best how to weave his stories, and the most luminous of all.’ Rigorous and luminous, spare and sensual, terse and hilarious, horrifying yet with a poetic, supernatural and metaphysical imagination, his writing―like that found in the novella The African Shore―throws open windows in your mind as you read.”

  ―Francisco Goldman, BOMB

  “Elegantly written, The African Shore conveys much information about cultures, past and present, along with the people who straddle the worlds of Europe and Africa . . . Stunning in the simplicity and clarity of its style, this novel says a great deal in very few words, and the ending is perfect.”

  ―Seeing the World Through Books

  “Rodrigo Rey Rosa is a Guatemalan novelist whose short, minimalist prose demands being sifted through to uncover layers and interwoven strands that make the reading of The African Shore a rich and intense experience.”

  ―New York Journal of Books

  FOR THE GOOD CRIPPLE, TRANSLATED BY ESTHER ALLEN

  “A writer of unprecedented originality, of an exigency that removes him from any common standing . . . Essential and necessary.”

  —Vanguardia

  “Audacious, magical . . . a marvel of poetic efficiency and power. Rey Rosa deftly collapses the frontier that lies between consciousness and unconsciousness, language and silence, civilization and barbarism.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “A sense of violent unease shading into terror drifts up from every line . . . his writing has a sharp, almost sadistic edge.”

  —Times Literary Supplement

  FOR SEVERINA, TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS

  “Rey Rosa’s book is both precious and precise. Its intense dreams, aphorisms, and literary lists are best read in one sitting. The author keeps readers on tenterhooks as issues of identity and desire ebb and flow along with a suspenseful episode involving the burying of a body. The fable here is a tale of love and forgiveness, which also includes the thievery of a book from Jorge Luis Borges’s library. And while it would be impertinent to steal a copy, it is hard not to be tempted to grab a copy of this slim, terrific book.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Severina is a satisfying, nicely crafted, and entertaining small tale of bookish obsessions, recommended to all who like a bit of clever literary fun.”

  —Complete Review

  “Severina is a nuanced but passionate homage to the act of reading, to a life lived, as the narrator finally puts it, ‘exclusively for and by books.’”

  —Zyzzyva

  “A complex meditation on books and why people read them; on the value of libraries, both public and private; and on how books contribute to the very essence of life for cultures, societies, and individuals.”

  —Seeing the World through Books

  FOR DUST ON HER TONGUE, TRANSLATED BY PAUL BOWLES

  “A genuinely surprising and original set of stories . . . a sense of violent unease shading into terror drifts up from every line . . . his writing has a sharp, almost sadistic edge.”

  —Times Literary Supplement

  “Compelling in the extreme . . . these twelve tales (that) boast of hidden dangers and lurking terrors, are written in a deceptively undramatic style, with masterful restraint. Stories that continue to disturb and delight long after they are laid to rest.”

  —Blitz

  “Twelve tales—many evoking the uncanny, most with surprise endings—explore how people seek to gain power from others . . . Rey Rosa writes about danger and precarious stability in an effective, straightforward style.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  OTHER TITLES BY RODRIGO REY ROSA

  Severina

  The African Shore

  The Good Cripple

  The Pelcari Project

  Dust on Her Tongue

  The Beggar’s Knife

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Rodrigo Rey Rosa

  Translation copyright © 2019 by Jeffrey Gray

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Previously published as Fábula asiática by Alfaguara in Spain in 2016. Translated from Spanish by Jeffrey Gray. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2019.

  Excerpt from “El aleph” by Jorge Luis Borges. Copyright © 1995 Maria Kodama, used by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.

  Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542090353 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1542090350 (hardcover)

  ISBN-13: 9781542090506 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1542090504 (paperback)

  Cover design by David Drummond

  First edition

  For Xenia, who journeyed with me most of the way.

  For Pía, who had to remain home.

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  PART ONE

  On his last . . .

  The Future of Abdelkrim

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  Boujeloud

  I

  Aljamía

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  PART TWO

  Xenophon

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  PART THREE

  Infection

  I

  II

  III

  Shroud

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  Joyride

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  EDITOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  I saw
yet another wonder in the royal palace. It was a large mirror hung over a rather deep well. From down inside the well, you could hear everything men and women said on the planet, and, raising your eyes, you could see all the cities and all the towns, as if you were there among them.

  —Lucian of Samosata, True History, Book One

  PART ONE

  On his last Sunday in Tangier, after giving a talk on the contemporary Mexican novel at the book fair, he visited Souani, a neighborhood in the lower part of Harun er-Rashid. He was looking for an old Moroccan friend of his whom he hadn’t seen in almost thirty years, an artist and storyteller who claimed not to know his date of birth—though it was sometime around 1940.

  A few days earlier, while stopping over in Paris, a Majorcan artist he’d just befriended had told him, “You’ve got to visit Mohammed. How long has it been? It’s a pity, really. If you see him, give him my best.”

  The house stood on a small, steep street—Number Eleven of the new, labyrinthine medina—one among many three- or four-story houses painted white and blue and, lately, here and there, Marrakech red.

  “It’s been a long time, my friend, don’t you think?”

  Mohammed Zhrouni raised his hand to his lips, took the other man’s hand, then touched his heart.

  “Twenty years.”

  “A little more.”

  “Twenty-six, actually.”

  “Time doesn’t exist anymore,” said Mohammed. “The world has gone mad.”

  In the living room, on the second floor, they walked across a row of gaudy synthetic carpets. Mohammed offered him a seat on one of his m’tarbas, the upholstered benches that lined the walls, and then, slowly and deliberately, sat down on the other side of the circular table in the middle of the room. He took off his slippers to stretch out on his own m’tarba. He sighed contentedly.

  “Hamdul-lah.”

  Rahma, Mohammed’s second wife (his first had died years before) came in to serve tea. She still looked young, her skin pale and very freckled, her eyes large and furtive, her hair reddish in the style of people from the Rif.

  They talked awhile of their families, as Moroccan etiquette requires: everything was fine, although Mohammed was quite poor and, in his old age, had been visited by a series of illnesses.

  Fátima, Mohammed’s oldest daughter, had gone with her husband to live in Almería, he said, from where she occasionally sent a little money.

  His second son, Driss, lived in Tangier. “He’s a bad egg,” said Mohammed, laughing. “We never see him. He’s a mechanic. He has a garage on the road to Achakar.”

  They sat quietly for a while, savoring the very sweet mint tea that Rahma had made. Mohammed said he no longer drank coffee, and also that he’d given up kif, Hamdul-lah.

  “Remember John?”

  The Mexican nodded. How could he not remember him?

  John Field, the American artist and critic who’d spent the last half of his life in Tangier, had been a friend and mentor to both men. Over the years, he’d given Mohammed paper and Chinese ink, then canvas and paint, so that he could develop his talents. From time to time, he’d also gotten him out of financial difficulties, as a son or a close relative might do. And he’d provided the Mexican with contacts in the publishing world, helping him become a writer and translator.

  “Well. Thanks to him, my son Abdelkrim is in trouble.”

  “Trouble?”

  Mohammed stroked his jaw, covered with a few days’ worth of gray stubble. The other man listened.

  Abdelkrim, son of Rahma and Mohammed, not even twenty years old and highly intelligent, had gone to live in the United States.

  “I’m going to ask you a favor, my friend.”

  “Yes, Mohammed.”

  Mohammed closed and opened his eyes, smiling. “Don’t worry, it’s not about money.”

  He stood up and crossed the small living room to a white chest of drawers with gold fittings. He pulled open a drawer and took out a black plastic bag. While his guest watched him, he dumped the contents—some audio cassettes and a tiny memory card—onto the round tabletop between the m’tarbas.

  “I don’t have any friends who know how to write,” Mohammed said, staring at the cassettes. “What am I? Ualó. Nothing. That’s all right—I don’t want to be anything! But when you have time, my friend, listen to what I say here.” He looked at him, then back at the cassettes. “You can turn these into books, if you want. You can write this.”

  “Is it the story of Abdelkrim?”

  “Yes. But also something more—much more!”

  “Of course,” said the other. He asked what was on the memory card.

  “I don’t even know what that is, honestly. Abdelkrim sent it to Driss, and Driss brought it to me. I know nothing about such things.”

  The visitor took the card between two fingers, turned it over, and put it back on the table.

  “Can you see what’s on there?” asked Mohammed.

  “It could be photos,” he said. “Who knows? You don’t have a computer?”

  “No, no,” Mohammed laughed. “I’ve never touched one.”

  He kept looking at the cassettes and the memory card. Mohammed then carefully put them back in the plastic bag and handed it to his guest.

  “Baraka lah u fik, Mohammed. Shukran b’sef.”

  He felt grateful, most of all, for the trust Mohammed was showing him.

  “La shukran. Al-lah wa shib.”

  In Casabarata, a large flea market in Tangier, things went on as they had for thirty years. Vendors of all ages hawked their wares, reveling in a privilege afforded them by tradition: unmeasured time. Heaped among the rows of stalls, under laminate or cane awnings, the products of the new century—smartphones and LED lamps; multibladed vegetable choppers; fiberglass sinks and toilets, transparent or colored—lived alongside objects both timeless and of the past: typewriters, giant cigarette lighters, salt and pepper shakers, shoes and belts, mirrors and picture frames, suitcases and backpacks, vases . . . Would-be shoppers fingered the merchandise idly, with no apparent interest. It didn’t take long to find a Sony double-cassette player in good condition. He picked it out of a twisted tower of tape decks. He asked the vendor if he could test it with an old cassette of Oum Kalsoum. It played smoothly.

  The cassette player on his shoulder, he went out into the street swarming with people, not unusual for that time of day. Standing a few steps from a mosque under construction, he hailed a taxi to take him back to the hotel. The first thing he did once he got to his room was to test the cassette player again. After enjoying a light supper and a coffee on the corner, he returned to his room. He put the numbered tapes in order and lay down on the bed with the player, ready to listen.

  The Future of Abdelkrim

  I

  The cassette was worn out and scratchy, but Mohammed’s voice came through clearly enough:

  After she gave birth to Abdelkrim, Rahma became very ill. To bring a child into the world requires money, and we had very little at the time. I went to visit John in Monteviejo, by the Sidi Mesmudi road.

  Villa Balbina, a large two-story house, was surrounded by a garden and a little grove that looked out on the sea. I drew back the latch of the old metal gate, and two dogs—one white, one black—came running up the road, barking alarm. They knew me, but they didn’t like me—I was a Riffi, and Nazarene dogs were wary of us.

  A clump of tall reeds grew beside the gate. I cut a stick and pushed the gate, which squeaked open. The dogs were now a few feet away, barking and showing their teeth, but just lifting the stick over my head was enough to send them running.

  From the stone terrace at the foot of John’s room, I shouted up a good morning. John appeared on the balcony, knotting the belt of his silk bathrobe. He raised his hand, and in a voice of mock solemnity said, “Salaam aleikum.”

  He was an atheist dog, but I liked him.

  “Aleikum salaam.”

  “Come in,” he told me. “The door’s open. I’ll be r
ight down.”

  His Spanish was almost perfect. It was easy to forget he was American.

  I entered the big room with the fireplace, which was in use all year round except in July and August. Pines, cypresses, and eucalyptus trees surrounded John’s house, so he was never lacking firewood. I sat down on a m’tarba under some colored tapestries and leaned back to wait for him. He didn’t take long to come down.

  “Hello, Mohammed.”

  “Hello, John.”

  He sat down on an old armchair, near the fire.

  “I’ve asked Leila to bring us some tea,” he said. “Or would you prefer something else?”

  “Tea is fine.”

  “Everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine.”

  “And Rahma?”

  “She’s fine. The baby was born five days ago.”

  “Hamdul-lah.”

  “Hamdul-lah.”

  We sat for a moment in silence. John looked out the window at some motionless clouds in the intensely blue sky. People called him the cloud painter. Maybe, as we sat there, he was thinking of his wife. She’d suffered a great deal, and he could do nothing to alleviate her pain. She’d also been an admirer of clouds. “The Moroccan sky is the bluest of all skies,” she used to say. “And its clouds are the loveliest.”

  “We have to do the aqeeqah,” I told him.

  “Aqeeqah?”

  “You know very well what it is, John.”

  In order to give a child his name, you must sacrifice two sheep—one, if it’s a girl. I used to have a little piece of land the size of a fingernail but big enough to have chickens, a burro, some goats, and a couple of lambs.

  “It’s all very costly, John, but it has to be done.”

  “What’s costly?”

  “Buying a good sheep. Even a month’s earnings aren’t enough.”

  “I believe it.”

  “Can you help me, John?”

  He looked unhappy.

  “Of course,” he said.

  The next day we killed a goat kid in Mreier where my land was, and we listened to jilala music. A goat is just as good as the lambs, and it costs less. When you’re poor, this is permitted. The imam came and said a few words, and we gave my son the name Abdelkrim. John didn’t come to the party, but when I went to visit him a few days later, he asked about the boy.