Two Sherpas – Sebastián Martínez Daniell (tr. Jennifer Croft)

I’ve read some excellent Charco Press titles in the past; Carla Maliandi’s The German Room, Margarita Garcia Robayo’s Fish Soup and recently Claudia Piñeiro’s Elena Knows are ones that particularly come to mind. Sebastián Martínez Daniell from Argentina is a new author to join the Charco stable, and his book Two Sherpas, translated by Jennifer Croft, is among the first titles from Charco’s 2023 catalogue. My verdict – I thought it was excellent.

In the beginning, two Sherpas peer over the edge of a precipice staring at the depths below where a British climber lies sprawled among the rocks. Almost near the top of Mount Everest, the silence around them is intense, punctuated by the noise of the gushing wind (“If the deafening noise of the wind raveling over the ridges of the Himalayas can be considered silence”). Wishing to emulate the feat of many others before him, the Englishman had aimed to ascend the summit but that ambition now is clearly in disarray. Assisting him in the climb are two Sherpas, one a young man, the other much older, but with this sudden accident, the Sherpas are in a quandary on how to best respond.

Thus, in a span of barely ten to fifteen minutes and using this particular moment as a central story arc, the novel brilliantly spins in different directions in a vortex of themes and ideas that encompass the mystery of the majestic Mount Everest, its significance in the history of imperialist Britain, the ambition of explorers to ascend its summit, attitudes of foreigners towards the Sherpa community to Shakespeare, Julius Caesar and Rome.

Interwoven with these swirling eddies of facts and snippets of information is a character study of the two Sherpas – an examination of those immediate seconds before the Englishman’s fall to dramatic forays into their pasts giving the reader a glimpse of their thoughts and their worldviews.  

Referred to as the young Sherpa and the old Sherpa throughout the text, we are also privy to their opinions of each other. While their vocation is the common factor that binds them, it becomes apparent that the two Sherpas barely know each other and don’t necessarily share their inner thoughts and feelings.

The fact that there’s not much trust between the two is revealed in the unfurling of those moments before the British climber’s fall, an accident that none of the two Sherpas witness. We are told that the old Sherpa led the way, the British climber was in the middle and the young Sherpa brought up the rear. Approaching a bend in the mountain and looking ahead, the young Sherpa sees his older colleague and the Englishman disappear. The young Sherpa has those brief seconds all to himself until he comes around the bend and sees his compatriot leaning over and staring into the abyss. With no knowledge of the real chain of events, the young Sherpa is left to wonder whether it was a genuine accident or a deliberate push by his partner.

With this locus of the immediate present, the novel reaches dizzying heights with its detours and digressions into a range of topics that cover history, topography, drama, Impressionism (“If the two Sherpas were Impressionist painters, the older man would be Renoir, and the younger Monet”)and so on. In terms of structure, the book comprises 100 chapters in the form of vignettes and snapshots that either displays a number or a title.  As far as length goes, most chapters are either a single paragraph or a couple of pages long, while a few run into 4-5 pages when they are delving into the protagonists’ pasts.

A TALE OF TWO SHERPAS

At its very core, the book dwells on the personalities of the two Sherpas. The young Sherpa is tormented by academic uncertainty, first contemplating a career in naval engineering, maybe even law only to subsequently veer towards thoughts of a diplomatic career. He is hesitant about discussing these options with the old Sherpa fearing the latter’s likely cynicism or even patronizing advice.  The other thought that occupies the young Sherpa’s mind is his impending role as Flavius in the Shakespearean play Julius Caesar to be dramatized by his school. His role is not necessarily significant but his lines open the play, a fact that petrifies him.

Memorising the lines of two or even three different characters is no small feat for a teenager with rudimentary training in acting. But the young Sherpa has been shown some mercy here. Being the newest student in the workshop and the only one who has to face making his stage debut, he has had the good fortune to land a very simple role: Flavius, a less-than-supporting character who appears in just one scene. There is, however, a catch. That exclusive intervention occurs at the opening of the first scene of the first act. The moment the curtain is drawn and, in the dark, the audience falls into the most ominous of silences.

This role of Flavius forms a pretext that allows the novel to devote a few chapters to ancient Rome and the dialogues between Flavius and the common people; the former criticizing the latter for celebrating Julius Caesar’s victory following Pompey’s defeat (“Home, you idle creatures, get you home!”); a section that is probably a reflection on the theme of empire and servitude and also mirrors some of the feelings of the Sherpas themselves towards their unfortunate client and foreigners in general.

“And so we have an outline of our Flavius already: elitist, demanding, authoritarian. Why? Where did he get such a feeling of impunity? Who does he think he is to talk to the plebeians that way? How dare he expel these citizens from the very streets of Rome?”

Meanwhile, the old Sherpa has his baggage to deal with. While the young Sherpa is a symbol of youth, optimism and aspiration, his older compatriot is world-weary, cynical and maybe even a tad defeated. While his younger peer has scaled the summit twice, the old Sherpa has yet to achieve that feat even once. That his latest expedition has also come to naught only fuels his contempt for the fallen Englishman. What’s more, the old Sherpa wasn’t born a Sherpa; he elects to be one much later. And that thought keeps nagging him. Why did he choose the mountains? Why not the prairies, the tropics, or even the sea? It seems that subconsciously his heightened desire to get away from the sea has formed the basis for the path he has chosen. This is explored through his strange experience as a youth on a beach resort on an unnamed island; he encounters a young woman called Rabbit, a cashier at the resort’s supermarket, whose persistent crying buries deep into his brain, its sound and his inability to help keep tormenting him through his nights.

THEMES AND IDEAS – SCALING NEW HEIGHTS

In its many asides and excursions, the novel first explores the mystique of Mount Everest. The allure of its conquest reigns supreme till the time it is first scaled by New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, only to see that aura gradually fade when a slew of climbers subsequently go on to scale its summit.

The themes of colonialism and empire make their way to the mountains too. Snippets of history give a flavour of Britain’s persistence in turning Mount Everest into a symbol of its superiority and its imperialist leanings. Two Sherpas also touches upon the themes of servitude and exploitation, particularly in the doleful manner the Sherpa community is treated. The old Sherpa gives us a first taste of this when he laments at how the Sherpas are labeled porters rather than equals on foreign shores. There’s also a sense of the Sherpa community being taken for granted by climbers, explorers and their governments. Non-Sherpas ascending the summits are feted for their achievements and heavily lauded, but the Sherpas go unnoticed on the fallacy that since mountaineering is ingrained in their psyche, scaling the summits is a matter of course for them and not a feat.

On the one hand, a reproduction of Turner, the Tibetan songs, the polished parquet of a spacious apartment in Amsterdam, or Zurich. Almost all of what’s wrong with this world. ‘Porters’, they call us when they’re there, these people. What people? These people: the people who visit the mountain. These people: self-indulgent visitors, thinks the old Sherpa. Those who see themselves as ‘mountaineers’, or ‘climbers’. A few, aware of their limitations, add a direct modifier, something adjectival, that limits their scope: ‘amateur mountaineer’, for example. Or ‘fledgling mountaineer’. But for the Sherpas, anyone who comes to the mountain with the intention of ascending is a visitor, plain and simple, an undesirable. A tourist. That much can be taken for granted. We are Sherpas; they are tourists.

In the immediate present, the attitude of the two Sherpas towards the fallen Englishman gives an inkling of their views. The young Sherpa is largely indifferent to the plight of his client, who is probably dead. Maybe so many climbers had perished earlier on the mountains that this Englishman is also now relegated to the ignominy of another statistic. And yet, a part of him feels that maybe his response is not correct, some empathy is required although it does not come easy. The old Sherpa seems contemptuous of the Englishman’s sorry fate, even derisive, inwardly commenting on the absurdity of flitting expressions on his client’s face in those split seconds before his fall.

But foreigners are not the only ones to treat the Sherpas unfairly; they are also prey to the Nepalese government which is lured by the money to be made from commercial tourism. A deadly avalanche in the mountains that kills sixteen Sherpas hardly elicits much empathy or thoughtful response from the cultural ministry.

The quest to reach the top of Mount Everest is also a meditation on ambition and exploration.  What is it about the Himalayas that draws so many aspiring climbers and mountaineers? Why does the need to reach the summit run so deep? What drives people to achieve this feat despite the dangers involved? Is it a personal milestone or a yearning for wider fame and acclaim?

LANGUAGE AND TRANSLATION – A DUAL FEAT OF IMAGINATION

What’s remarkable about Two Sherpas is the language and Daniell’s descriptive powers; a linguistic feat that fuels an explosion of vocabulary that can sometimes confound but is mostly dazzling. The prose is detailed and carefully articulated in the way each idea, theme, or thought is presented; often giving the impression of looking through a magnifying glass to gaze at every facet of the story and the interiority of its characters. While Daniell’s writing is truly unique and original, credit must also go to Jennifer Croft’s brilliant translation of a prose style that is sumptuous and intricate but must have been a challenge to translate.

In a nutshell, Two Sherpas is a brilliant, vividly imagined, richly layered novel that gives the reader much to ponder and think about. Highly recommended!

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Notes from Childhood – Norah Lange (tr. Charlotte Whittle)

Notes from Childhood is a unique, inventive memoir filled with evocative vignettes that capture the innocence and essence of childhood; the fears, anxieties, love and simple moments of happiness that children experience.

These snapshots of family life and domesticity are filtered through our narrator’s (Norah herself) childhood memories. When the book opens, it is 1910, a few years before the First World War and the family is in the midst of relocating from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, from the urban city to the rural province. Our narrator’s big family comprises her parents, elder sisters (Irene, Marta, Georgina), and younger siblings (Susana and Eduardo).

Flickering and joyous, broken by only a single night, the first journey we made from Buenos Aires to Mendoza emerges from my memory like a landscape recovered through a misted pane of glass.

As Norah and her family settle into their quinta, a stream of visuals presented to us paint a picture of their harmonious existence in Mendoza, a period that forms a substantial part of Norah’s childhood.

She begins by describing the “three windows that looked into her childhood” – her father’s study with its imposing furniture upholstered in leather, a very formal place Norah could visit only occasionally; her mother’s sewing room, which was inviting and emanated warmth as the sewing baskets overflowed with ribbons and lace, a place where her children could unburden themselves; her eldest sister Irene’s room as she regaled them with tales of kidnappings, of elopements, and how she would one day run away from home.

Our narrator then dwells on her sisters and their personalities – the brooding and intense Marta, whose peeled hands “looked like the pages of a well-loved book whose edges curl backward.” There’s Georgina with her immaculate, poised figure, always ready to help with anything and the apple of their mother’s eye. Then there’s Susana, younger but closer to Norah in age, so that they bond better coupled with the fact that both have flaming red hair.  

Shards of surrealism, seen through the prism of a child’s vivid imagination, pierce these scenes. For instance, one such piece conveys how Norah always tried to slip into the faces of people she observed.

At the age of six, whenever I noticed a pronounced curve in the nose of any of the important men who filed through my house, I would laugh. Then I would slide into their faces, positioning my body inside to adjust to their silhouette.

Another touching snippet showcases the tragic death of her father’s horse and the deep impression it leaves on young Norah’s mind. It’s made all the more poignant by the knowledge that the horse could not adapt to its old age and was sidelined for a younger one.

He died of jealousy. That’s how I understood it, and that’s what I wish to keep on believing forever.

Of course, any family life is punctuated by its fair share of highs and lows, so while the birth of their youngest sister Esthercita brings immense joy to the family, the father’s death leaves them feeling adrift as they venture into an uncertain, unknowable future.

Occasionally news from the outside world penetrates the fabric of their domestic life. Even though Buenos Aires is physically and figuratively far away from Europe, the hotbed of strife during the First World War, snatches of it reaches the ears of the sisters inducing feelings of dread.

…the events of the First World War were for us a hazy, distant reality, and once settled in Buenos Aires we were so cut off from all that went on in the world that we ended up forgetting it entirely.

One afternoon, rumors flew through the neighborhood that the Germans were winning. Terrified, and convinced that their victory would mean any number of humiliations, that we would be forced to marry them and to speak their language, we decided to barricade ourselves in the house.

Our narrator, meanwhile, as a child is beset with fears and obsessions (“At one time, it occurred to me to make a list of my obsessions, to contemplate them coldly and perhaps try to free myself of one”). Her role is akin to that of a voyeur, as she observes her sisters and acquaintances surreptitiously, often hidden from full view – she snoops on Marta bathing naked in the moonlight, she peeks into a room where Irene is breastfeeding their younger brother, she yearns to spy on her French teacher’s daughter through a crack in the door so that she can see the latter faint during a dress fitting.

There is joy to be found in simple pleasures – an outing to the cinema (“a room filled with a thick and mysterious darkness we sensed would be unlike any other we’d known”) stimulates feelings of intense excitement and wonder; the crowning glory of those perfect Saturday nights is exemplified by hot baths at dusk complete with lit stoves in the bedrooms, warm towels and nightgowns; while Christmas conjures up glowing images of “huge parcels, that late, keen ritual, that poignant and slightly dreamy midnight…”

I loved to contemplate even more from the next day, in the tangible truth of the gifts that were proofs of its fleeting, mysterious, tender reality.

But this microcosm of a happy family is shattered when the father dies, plunging his wife and children into hardships and poverty, their misery amplified when they are compelled to make the ultimate sacrifice – sell their piano.

Together, we all had sensed that the worse was to come, since though we’d suspected it many times, the sale of the piano was something we didn’t dare countenance for even an instant. The side table, the enormous mirror in the drawing room, and nearly all the furniture we brought from Mendoza had already gone, but giving up the piano represented a decisive, unmistakable poverty.

Our narrator is no stranger to poverty having glimpsed this condition early on in the book when a man approaches her father for a safety pin to fasten his shirt so that he can properly mourn the death of his wife – “I believe no case of poverty has touched me so much since then.”

Where coming-of-age novels typically tend to follow a linear narrative structure mostly illustrated by the protagonist looking back upon his/her past, Notes from Childhood is composed entirely of clips of family scenes woven into a rich tapestry, each clip not more than 2-4 pages long. This fragmented narrative style works since, as adults, what we remember most from our childhood are certain key moments that stand out from everything else.

In her afterward, translator Charlotte Whittle talks about how Lange was inspired by collage artwork  – characterized by varied images stuck together to produce one vibrant piece of art – while composing this memoir. An indication of this is given earlier on in the novel where our narrator entertained herself with her favourite pastime that involved “clipping words from local and foreign papers, arranging them into little piles.”

Notes from Childhood, then, is a gorgeous book exploring the realm of childhood, the light and darkness within it, intimate portraits that sizzle with strangeness, wonder, beauty and sadness.   

Elena Knows – Claudia Piñeiro (tr. Frances Riddle)

Elena Knows is a forceful, thought-provoking, unconventional crime novel where Claudia Piñeiro effectively explores a range of social concerns such as illness, caregiving, crippling bureaucracy and a woman’s choice regarding her body.

When the book opens, Elena, a woman in her sixties, is home alone waiting for the clock to strike ten. Elena suffers from Parkinson’s, a progressively devastating illness, characterized by loss of control over everyday movements.

And she wonders if Parkinson’s is masculine or feminine, because even though the name sounds masculine it’s still an illness, and an illness is something feminine. Just like a misfortune. Or a curse. And so she thinks she should address it as Herself, because when she thinks about it, she thinks ‘fucking whore illness.’ And a whore is a she, not a he. If Herself will excuse my language.

Elena is now entirely dependent on Levodopa, a drug routinely given to increase dopamine, a critical chemical in the body, a messenger of sorts that carries signals from the brain to the limbs.

And he said, an illness of the central nervous system that degrades, or mutates, or changes, or modifies the nerve cells in such a way that they stop producing dopamine. And then Elena learned that when her brain orders the feet to move, for example, the order only reaches her feet if the dopamine takes it there.

But that’s not the only matter troubling Elena. The real burden weighing heavy on her soul is the sudden, recent death of her daughter Rita. On a rainy afternoon, Rita was mysteriously and inexplicably found hanging from the bell tower in the local church. The police classify her death as suicide and close the case with no inclination to pursue the matter further.

But, Elena refuses to accept the police’s version. She’s convinced it is murder and pushes the inspector to do more, to interview potential suspects so that the true facts of Rita’s death can come to light. Because there is one aspect of her daughter’s personality that Elena knows could not have caused Rita to voluntarily visit this local place of worship. So terrified was Rita of being struck by lightning that she always chose to stay away from the church in stormy weather. And it was raining on that fateful day. That explains Elena’s conviction that Rita could not have possibly entered the bell tower (“it’s the town lightning rod”) of her own accord, someone clearly dragged her there and killed her.

The local police indulge her by meeting her regularly but don’t really take her seriously. Elena finds no solace in religion either especially since the priest insists that she put the matter to rest and move on.

When it dawns on her that there is now only one avenue left, Elena braces herself to locate Isabel, a woman Rita had “helped” twenty years ago but had lost touch since then. Elena’s mission is simple – she is hoping that by calling in an old debt, she gets the help required in catching Rita’s murderer. But given Elena’s illness, finding Isabel is a challenge akin to climbing a steep mountain. She would have to walk a few blocks to the station, ride the train, and after that either walk or taxi to Isabel’s home, hoping against hope that Isabel hasn’t relocated in all that time. It’s a game of chance; yet, Elena is resolved and feels herself equal to the task. Hence, she patiently waits for the clock to strike ten so that she can consume her next pill of the day giving her the fillip to embark on her arduous journey.

That’s the central premise of the story and I don’t want to reveal anything more. But as the novel progresses we are given a glimpse into the tenuous relationship between Elena and Rita, more colour on Rita’s belligerent personality and the crucial encounter between Rita and Isabel twenty years ago, an incident whose repercussions Elena will be compelled to deal with now. The chapters alternate between the present where Elena sets off on her journey, and the past which shines a light on the life she shared with Rita.

What makes Elena Knows so compelling is the richness of themes explored, a gamut of hard-hitting social issues. First of all, the book is an unflinching portrayal of a debilitating disease, a hard-edged look at the daily struggles of performing commonplace activities, and the loss of dignity that it involves. Among many things, the illness completely alters Elena’s perception of time, which is now not governed by the clock but pills that she has to take at hourly intervals. Once the effects of the pill wear off, Elena can’t move till she takes her next dose. Her neck perpetually droops and restricts her gaze to a certain height, and her mouth is always dribbling.  She understandably resents being helpless but is painfully aware that she has no choice. And yet, does she still have the will to live on despite her failing body?

Then there is Rita, her daughter, a dominant force in the book, even if she is now dead. Elena and Rita share a love-hate relationship. Given that both women are headstrong, fights are a regular feature when they are together, frequently hurling cruel words at each other.

They repeated the same routine everyday. The walk, the whip cracks, the distance, and finally the silence. The words changed, the reasons behind the fights were different, but the cadence, the tone, the routine, never varied…

As Elena’s disease progresses, the burden of caring for her falls on Rita, who fights through her teeth to ensure health insurance covers her mother’s mounting medical bills. This aspect of the novel brings two critical problems to the fore – the challenges of caregiving and the tediousness of having to deal with seemingly insurmountable red tape. Both these issues highlight how lack of requisite support, both practical and emotional, can make it hard for the caregiver to cope, paving the way for anxiety and depression.

Piñeiro’s bio mentions that she is an active figure in the fight for legalization of abortion in Argentina, so it’s not surprising that she also addresses this topic head-on in the novel, how every woman has the right to make her own choice regarding her body and she employs Rita’s actions as a vehicle to explore this point. As readers are made privy to a slew of Rita’s eccentricities, we are told how she avoids walking past the midwife Olga’s house and always crosses the pavement when she approaches her place. Olga also performs abortions, a fact that Rita finds hard to digest. Rita is a woman driven by her own convictions with not much respect for other people’s choices. She has fixed ideas on moral code and behaviour and an unwelcome aggressiveness in pushing her views on others. 

Roberto and Rita were united by their convictions more than anything else, that way they both had of stating the most broad, arbitrary, clichéd notions as absolute truths. Convictions about how another person should experience something they themselves had never experienced, how people should walk through life along the roads they’d walked down and the ones they hadn’t, issuing decrees about what should and shouldn’t be done.

Ultimately, both Elena and Rita are flawed, unlikeable characters (Rita, I thought, was even worse, particularly for being a busybody), but it’s hard not to feel sorry for their plight accentuated by the difficulties of Elena’s illness. As the novel hurtles towards its conclusion, Elena is forced to confront some hard truths and a possibly growing realization that her earlier opinions about many things might not hold much water. Can she bring herself to accept that at her age?

In a nutshell, Elena Knows is a riveting, tightly constructed novel that turns the crime genre on its head by providing social commentary on pressing issues that remain relevant even today. That she manages to do so by not being too preachy or sentimental only enhances the book’s power.   

Dead Girls – Selva Almada (tr. Annie McDermott)

I first heard of Selva Almada last year, when Charco Press released her excellent novel, The Wind That Lays Waste, which fuelled my appetite for more of her work. So I had high expectations from her second book published this year – Dead Girls – and I must say it turned to another impressive offering.   

Dead Girls is a searing, hard-hitting book which explores the blight of gender violence and femicide in Almada’s native Argentina.

It is a powerful, hybrid piece of work – a blend of journalistic fiction and memoir – as Almada digs deeper into the murder of three small-town teenage girls in the 1980s, unspeakable crimes that never got solved, where “being a woman” was the primary motive for these heinous acts being committed.

In 1983, Maria Luisa Quevedo, a fifteen-year old girl, working as a maid, was raped, strangled and dumped in a wasteland on the outskirts of the city of Sáenz Peña.

Sarita Mundín was twenty when she disappeared in March 1988. One year later her disfigured body is found washed up on a river bank in the Córdoba province.

The case of nineteen-year old Andrea Danne, who was training to be a psychology teacher, is even more disturbing because she was murdered while sleeping in her bed in the alleged safety of her own home in San José.

Almada’s investigation into these three murders reveals a shocking societal structure where casual violence is the norm rather than the exception, and while men are the clear culprits, this misogynistic attitude has been ingrained into the psyche of the women too.

I didn’t know a woman could be killed simply for being a woman, but I’d heard stories that gradually, over time, I pieced together. Stories that didn’t end in the woman’s death, but saw her subjected to misogyny, abuse and contempt.

In her introduction, Almada tells us that she completed writing the book in three months, but the research required for it took three years. As part of her extensive fieldwork, Almada pored over police reports, case files and newspaper articles. She communicated with the family members of the three victims either by meeting them personally or through mail. She also had extensive consultations with the Señora – a medium and a tarot card reader – to gain some perspective on the circumstances surrounding those three deaths.

Dead Girls is as tense and gripping as a crime novel but what sets it apart is that Almada is not interested in finding out who committed the murders. The investigation is more to seek out patterns, threads of similarities between the murders of which there are plenty – widespread gossip when these deaths were discovered, lack of serious intent by the police or the law to nab the culprits, and the general sense of apathy – of how little the society cared for what happened to these girls.

Hence, the focus of the book is entirely on the victims, to ensure that their stories do not sink into complete obscurity. Given the unforgivable nature of these crimes, any attempt to extensively explore the motives and reasons behind them would only mean devoting more space to the perpetrators. Why give them that importance?

We are given a glimpse of the potential suspects in each case and the arrests made, but we are also told that lack of concrete proof hampered efforts to build a watertight case with the consequence that the criminals went punished and the murdered girls never got justice.

What also comes to the fore is the malicious gossip and “trial by the public” aspects in each of the three cases. Absence of solid evidence, at the time, did nothing to prevent tongues from wagging, with the result that the victims’ families suffered too. For instance, in Andrea Danne’s case, her mother found herself at the receiving end and judged harshly for slipping into a state of shock and displaying a calm demeanor because this response did not fit in with society’s expectations of wailing and crying. 

Though Almada’s narrative centres on these three girls, while also giving a flavor of the community and neighbourhood they were a part of, she also weaves in elements of her own personal experiences, of the dangers she herself faced as a woman.

I don’t remember a specific conversation about violence against women, or any particular warnings from my mother on the subject. But the topic was always there.

In her powerful introduction as well as in the epilogue, Almada makes it clear that her fate could easily have mirrored that of Maria Luisa, Sarita and Andrea, and if she is alive today it’s only because of sheer luck.

At the beginning of the book, Almada writes:

Violence was normalized. The neighbour beaten by her husband, the teenager next door who put up with her jealous boyfriend’s tantrums, the father who wouldn’t let his daughters wear short skirts or make-up. All the responsibility for what happened to us was laid at our feet: if you stay out late you might be raped, if you talk to strangers you might be raped, if you come back from a dance by yourself you might be raped. If you were raped, it was always your fault.

Almada is, of course, referring to the environment in Argentina. But really, the violence she points to, unfortunately, has global resonance and is the story of pretty much any country.

The Wind That Lays Waste – Selva Almada (tr. Chris Andrews)

I am beginning to rely on Charco Press for interesting literature from Latin America. Already this year, I have read and loved two wonderful books – The German Room by Carla Maliandi and Fish Soup by Margarita Garcia Robayo.

Thus, when The Wind That Lays Waste was recently released, I was very eager to delve right into it. And I also thought that the cover was the most gorgeous of their books so far.

The Wind That Lays Waste is set over the course of a day in a remote town in Argentina, somewhere in the Chaco region.

The novella (it’s slim at 114 pages) is centred on four characters – Reverend Pearson, a forceful Evangelical preacher who strongly believes in Christ, his sixteen year old sceptical daughter Leni, Gringo Brauer, a garage mechanic and his young assistant Tapioca, who is the same age as Leni.

Reverend Pearson and Leni are on their way to Pastor Zack’s home when their car breaks down. They have no choice but to take it to Gringo Brauer’s garage and wait while the car is getting fixed.

Gradually, the personalities of the four characters are revealed to us.

Reverend Pearson is passionate about his calling as a priest and is renowned for the power of his sermons. His mother and even his church mentor for that matter view his gift for preaching as a means to secure funds for the church, but for Reverend Pearson it is all about winning souls for Christ to purify.

Once again, he felt that he was an arrow burning with the flame of Christ. And the bow that is drawn to shoot that arrow as far as possible, straight to the spot where the flame will ignite a raging fire. And the wind that spreads the fire that will lay waste to the world with the love of Jesus.

Leni’s relationship with the Reverend is complicated. She resents that her father’s affection for her is not total; there is always Christ between them. She is also disdainful of her father’s belief in divine intervention at a time when having a practical view makes more sense. And yet despite these feelings, she admires and respects his charismatic preaching.

But that’s not all. Leni cannot forget that Pearson one day abandoned her mother and took Leni with him. It is something they have never spoken about since then but it hangs like a Damocles sword.

Her childhood was very recent, but her memory of it was empty. Thanks to her father, the Reverend Pearson, and his holy mission, all she could remember was the inside of the same old car, crummy rooms in hundreds of indistinguishable hotels, the features of dozens of children she never spent long enough with to miss when the time came to move on, and a mother whose face she could hardly recall.

Gringo Brauer is the opposite of Reverend Pearson. He is getting old and cynical and believes in the power of nature, in the power of the present. He has not much use for religion.

He had no time for lofty thoughts. Religion was for the women and the weak. Good and evil were everyday things, things in the world you could reach out and touch. Religion, in his view, was just a way of ignoring responsibilities. Hiding behind God, waiting to be saved, or blaming the Devil for the bad things you do.

He had taught Tapioca to respect the natural world. He believed in the forces of nature. But he had never mentioned God. He could see no reason to talk about something he thought irrelevant.

And then there is Tapioca. When he was a child his mother visited Gringo one day and left the child with him, claiming that Tapioca is Gringo’s son.

Tapioca, meanwhile, is an eager assistant; vulnerable, innocent and ripe for being influenced and molded by whomever takes him under their wing. Tapioca feels uncomfortable around revered Pearson but at the same time is fascinated and mesmerized by the preacher’s talk on Christ.

Eventually, as the weather worsens, and a storm is approaching, tensions between these four (or more precisely the two men) reach boiling point.

The Wind That Lays Waste is an intense and beautiful novella that can be read over the course of an afternoon. Almada’s storytelling is straightforward and spare. And her writing is languid and lyrical.

Her descriptive powers, when it comes to either nature or man-made surroundings, stand out. She is particularly great at evoking the stark landscape of Argentina.

She couldn’t remember a storm like this. Blue cracks flashed the sky, giving the landscape a ghostly look.

Five hundred yards away, in a field, lightning struck a tree, and the orange flames held out against the rain for a good long while.

It was a beautiful spectacle. Sometimes the curtain of water was so dense they couldn’t see the old petrol pump, although it was just a few yards away.

The one thing I was not sure about when beginning this novel was the extent of religious overtones. I am averse to books where religion is the focal point, but thankfully Almada manages to not make this novel preachy. All the characters’ viewpoints are presented and there is no indication that Almada prefers one view over the other. It is left for the reader to decide.

‘Are you a believer, Mr Brauer?’

The Gringo poured himself some more wine and lit another cigarette.

‘I don’t have time for that stuff.’

The Reverend smiled and held his gaze.

‘Well, I don’t have time for anything else.’

‘To each his own,’ said Brauer, getting up.

Overall, another strong offering from Charco Press!