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The twenty stories collected in this volume offer not only a comprehensive look at the variety and invention of Bolivian literature, but also provide more information about the heart and soul of Bolivia than a warehouse full of news reports. The most comprehensive collection of modern Bolivian literature yet published in English, The Fat Man from La Paz offers a kaleidoscopic view of the country's last fifty years, from a sociological and cultural viewpoint.
The Fat Man from La Paz places such Bolivian luminaries as Augusto Cespedes, whose The Well is probably the most published piece of Bolivian literature, alongside bright young stars like Edmundo Paz Soldan, one of last year's finalists for the Romulo Gallegos Literary Prize (the Nobel prize for Latin American writers). In the title story, Gonzalo Lema's "The Fat Man from La Paz," a Bolivian detective, with a nod to Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, takes a hard look at corruption in Bolivia's capital city and learns a thing or two about the dark ambiguities lurking in human nature and in the communities people build. Many of the other stories in The Fat Man from La Paz appear here for the first time in English.
Chapter One
The Day of Atonement
GIOVANNA RIVERO SANTA CRUZ
Translated by Clara Marin
Lola Duarte always knew that her destiny was to be a whore. She knew it on the first Day of Atonement when Don Eusebio Terrazas showed her love between the warm manure and the tanned hides of the day. That happened when she was thirteen, and from then on her days counted. The past was merely a dark certainty. She had arrived at the colony of Jews with the first strong southerly winds of winter, and no human force could work harder than her. In time the Jews grew accustomed to the dark-skinned creature crying each time a baby bled because of the bulge that God gave him below the waist. They explained to her that it was called circumcision, that it was good for the soul and that someday she would make a living by introducing it into her body. But Lola Duarte didn't understand the sweet omen of the trade on her bare behind. She would do so forty years later, facing the extraordinary wealth that shook off her fears about her death. Before, however, she chose clients randomly, guiding herself partly by common sense and partly by the faint taste of nostalgia that the women of the street have. She preferred mestizos and men without too much protocol—smelling of work, of dawn, with the sun from all the crops stored on their backs. This way it was easier to be polished and impress the workers with the caresses learned at the border, since it is well-known among whores that frontier knowledge is the most lucid, like ever so slightly hiding the light behind the darkness of foreboding, or, otherwise, to pronouncethe voices that condemn, the prophecy.
That was how Lola Duarte became the happiest and most famous whore of the Colony, and would have remained so until sleep had eased the chore for her with its gentle dream, if at around that time "el gaucho" Moreira hadn't shown up spreading his good-natured laugh and his fresh ideals of equality of the sexes, alleging that the biblical philosophy of Adam's rib was mere historical speculation and that, in truth, matriarchy was the only option for the current times. The women got excited and many dared to limit their hours of service to within the eight working hours of the day, which inconvenienced the workers who were used to spending their salary at the bodega after midnight.
The Jews began to worry and finally, in desperation, they resorted to a lawyer without a degree who improvised some law of protection for the prostitutes. Until then they had been working with no reference other than the union managed by Don Eusebio Terrazas, a retired general, who was luckier than the devil to have found at the Colony of Jews the most profitable business in the world. And so, choosing the tastes and eccentricities of these men without a homeland, Eusebio put away his war medals and decorations under the mattress and under the soul. But he still knew with genuine pride how to tell a lady from a bitch; in Lola Duarte he admired the high forehead and firm chin, and that was enough to love her in an unexpected silence. He even secretly thought about the possibility of saving her dignity and making her his wife, for along the way, with his restrained personality, no man had made him jealous. With Lola, Eusebio took hold of the most intimate rituals. He firmly believed that in this land of no one, even the neighbor's birthday was reason to celebrate, and when he left in search of the South, it was not hard for him to cry a different tune.
Everyone respected Eusebio Terrazas. He initiated the girls into the profession and measured their beauty with a few masculine secrets. None of them ever refused him a warm spot under their sheets and on their days off, especially Lola Duarte, who generously received him between her legs, until the fateful day she looked into "el gaucho" Moreira's eyes. The Jews were on the eve of the Day of Atonement, the festivity of this race to forgive itself and the rest of humanity. There were hugs, kisses, a lot of liquor, tears of loneliness, and mothers hollowing out the soul to cradle other children, all Jews of course, which means that among men with no homeland it is easy to anchor life in any corner of hospitality. They had prepared wines by fermenting them more with desire than patience, and dancing with hallucination flowing through their veins, they looked like sinners dazed by the final judgment day. "El gaucho" Moreira took advantage of the easygoing spirit and set himself up a pile of bundles to begin his heated speech on feminism. He assured them that women were not born to spread their legs for any man who pants like a wild animal, that the men better start paying higher fees to compensate for such humiliation and that, in conclusion, we were all born from a female. He preached his proposals of fairness and justice with such ardor that he had to look twice at the gypsy eyes riveted to his chest from among the crowd. Nobody knew what Lola Duarte saw in that little battered man—physically, that is. The fact is that he followed her without resistance through the bushes and then, enraged with pleasure, he got to know her applelike breasts and the orgiastic passage that consumed his defenses.
The surprise of love was such that they almost didn't hear Eusebio Terrazas's grotesque heavy breathing behind the underbrush, stunned, with the marriage proposal stuck in his lungs. Among crickets, darkness, and the smell of damp earth, the leader of the Union of Prostitutes was able to recognize the only woman he had ever loved, damp and surrendering to a swindling outsider who hadn't paid her a cent.
The Jews prepared a formal duel, forming a chain of outstretched arms to avoid hurting widows and children. Each opponent received an identical revolver, and they counted the steps of distance with the exact geometry of suspense. "El gaucho" Moreira and Eusebio Terrazas walked, their backs to each other, barely breathing so as not to move the air, carrying the terror in their stomachs, feeling the rush of nervous blood and the smell of the chased beast. Eusebio heard the only shot and fell into a dark well—a pleasant, endless fall, like that of the sleeping man.
The blackout didn't last long, and then Eusebio Terrazas claimed the body of "el gaucho" Moreira in order to bury him. One must bury the enemy with the same respect and hatred expressed in life; that way those feelings don't become fear and take over the night. He gave each of his women a piece of clothing, a smile, some old jewelry, his shoes, and his best underwear; he gave the Jewish women the jealousy of having fought a duel for a whore, and he left Lola Duarte two things—To redeem you, Lolita, he told her—a promise and a secret, which in reality, are the same thing, even though the first carries an illusion and the second wisdom. Then he left with shame hurting in his chest. On his way he stirred up dust and much vengeance, but he didn't retrace his steps toward the Colony.
Lola Duarte sat down to wait, impassive, practicing a future old age that would arrive in her forties. Finally, one day, actually one Day of Atonement, Lola ran her fingers over her face and discovered she had the universal appearance of the dead. She applied carmine to her lips, tired from kissing other people's words, and started walking a coarse step due to so many years of sitting, waiting. She got to the place of the promise and unburied the visions of the neclace and gold medals that inhabited her hopes of a less austere life. For a long time she looked at the desecrated tomb, and the tears followed clamly, as peace must be. Some say that Eusebio Terrazas left her mirror; others, the white bones of "el gaucho" Moreira so that at least she may have him in death. But most people simply say with assurance that Lola Duarte joined the festivities of the Jews for the right reason. For her this truly was the Day of Atonement.
| Acknowledgments | 11 | |
| Editor's Preface | 13 | |
| Introduction | 17 | |
| The Day of Atonement | 33 | |
| Buttons | 39 | |
| Dochera | 47 | |
| Celebration | 65 | |
| The Pianist | 79 | |
| The Fat Man from La Paz | 85 | |
| Sisterhood | 103 | |
| The Creation | 107 | |
| Sacraments by the Hour | 117 | |
| The One with the Horse | 121 | |
| Angela from Her Own Darkness | 133 | |
| The Window | 141 | |
| Hedge-hopping | 149 | |
| To Die in Oblivion | 163 | |
| Ambush | 175 | |
| The Other Gamecock | 185 | |
| The Cannon of Punta Grande | 235 | |
| The Indian Paulino | 253 | |
| The Spider | 267 | |
| The Well | 273 | |
| Credits | 295 | |
| Authors' and Translators' Biographies | 301 | |
| About the Editor | 315 |
Overview
The twenty stories collected in this volume offer not only a comprehensive look at the variety and invention of Bolivian literature, but also provide more information about the heart and soul of Bolivia than a warehouse full of news reports. The most comprehensive collection of modern Bolivian literature yet published in English, The Fat Man from La Paz offers a kaleidoscopic view of the country's last fifty years, from a sociological and cultural viewpoint.
The Fat Man from La ...