Ramifications: A Novel by Daniel Saldaña París
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The following is an excerpt from Daniel Saldaña París’s new novel, Ramifications, translated by Christina MacSweeney. It tells the story of a young man looking back on the turning point of his childhood: the disappearance of his mother. París’s debut novel, Among Strange Victims, was a finalist for the 2017 Best Translated Book Award. In 2017 París was named by the Hay Festival as one of the best Latin American writers under the age of forty.
If I had the will to leave this bed, I’d like to take a taxi to the Taxqueña terminal and, once there, board the same bus bound for Villahermosa that I took twenty-three years ago. Perhaps in that way, through the ritual of repetition, the ramifications of that night—of that summer—would be obliterated. Perhaps then the dream about my father and the pigeon, the laugh of the teenage soldier, Mariconchi’s absorbed expression, the somber forebodings that welled up as I watched the sun rise that morning; perhaps all that would become a closed book, water under the bridge, a past history that no longer affects me. But I know that going to Taxqueña now and taking that same bus would be no use. It wouldn’t do any good. First I have to write the story through to the end, fill this spiral-bound notebook with my scribblings to the very last page, drop it by the bed, open the next notebook, and continue writing until that one, too, is full. Not because writing is an act of salvation, but because there’s no other way I can tell myself the things I don’t even dare think when I’m alone. Only when I’ve written it all down will I be able to look at myself in the mirror and not see the face of someone else, the other that stalks me from within.
Josefina—the woman who, on Mariana’s instructions, cleans my apartment—turned up this morning, so I guess it must be Friday. I spoke with her for a long time, or rather, she spoke, and I listened from my bed. Her voice was drowned out from time to time by the noise of dishes being washed, but I was able to deduce from the context what I’d missed. She told me a sad, complicated story about feuds between neighbors and threats made by the local political boss.
As she was leaving, Josefina told me that I should get in touch with Señora Mariana—as she calls my sister—more often. What had she seen or heard in my sister’s home to cause her to offer me that advice? Was Mariana all right? Had she broken up with her partner after four years of conjugal bliss? Was it, in fact, my life, what happens in this apartment, that led her to believe that I need to talk to someone?
Whatever the case, I decide to contact Mariana. I don’t call her on the phone, that would be going too far; instead I send a message: “Remember when I kicked a pigeon in the square?” Her reply takes several hours, and arrives as night is falling: “Ha ha. You cried for three days.”
Despite the apparent coolness of its content, her message calms me for a while. I like the way Mariana is never condescending toward me, even though she knows that I’m in a fragile, disturbed state of mind, even though she’s aware that I seldom leave my bed. Criticizing me, laughing at my way of dramatizing events, is her way of showing affection. I’ve been at peace with that fact for many years.
When Mariana left home at the age of eighteen it seemed to me an unpardonable betrayal. My father took advantage of the situation to convert my sister’s bedroom into a utility room, in which he stored a broken television set and an exercise bike he only ever used three times. That dusty room seemed to represent everything that separated my father from his daughter.
Without the grease of everyday life together, my relationship with Mariana also began to show signs of rust. Later, she cut herself off from my father completely for several years due to an argument, the details of which no one ever explained to me. At that time I was contending with the normal adolescent conflicts—intensified by my mania for trying to resemble my dead mother—and didn’t have the maturity to restore the fraternal relations Mariana had unilaterally broken off.
Only my father’s unexpected diagnosis of cancer, two years ago, brought us together again. Our first meetings, in the hospital cafeteria, were a little awkward. Initially, Mariana and I opted for a sort of unnatural formality; like former workmates, we caught up on the basics of our lives without going into details or alluding to feelings. My father’s illness was, naturally, the theme we most frequently returned to. We commented on his prognosis, the treatments the doctors proposed without convincing either him or us of their efficacy, the general conditions in the hospital. Then we’d sit in uncomfortable silence, sipping stewed coffee from our polystyrene cups.
Gradually both Mariana and I relaxed, perhaps worn down by the weariness my father’s cancer induced in us. A sort of mutual understanding was restored between us. She began to tease me again, like when we were kids, and on several occasions I fruitlessly attempted to get her to talk about Teresa and the summer of ’94. “Forget it, little bro. That was a long time ago, none of it matters now.” But however much Mariana refused to acknowledge the weight of the past in her life, it was obvious that Teresa’s premature death had affected her as much as it had me, although in different—maybe even opposite—ways. What in Mariana became rage, inspiration, a motor that gave her life direction and force, had hollowed me out, like a subterranean river eroding my essentially feeble adult normality.
After leaving the house in Educación, Mariana graduated from college with top grades and started out on a successful career as a government policy consultant. I didn’t tell her at that time, and still haven’t—it would be a weird thing to include in a text message—but it’s always been clear to me that something of Teresa’s undaunted critical spirit, her way of taking things seriously, lives on in Mariana.
For my part, I find it more difficult to identify what I inherited from Teresa. Despite all my efforts to be like her, my social conscience has never developed to the level of making me feel passionate about the things that mattered deeply to her—and now matter deeply to Mariana. I even have the impression that, with time, my features have become increasingly less like my mother’s. And, as I’ve already said, my voice has never—in its natural state—had that same neutral tone.
For a time I convinced myself that I’d inherited Teresa’s analytical ability, her way of questioning and distrusting everything. I now realize that I was never sufficiently distrustful.
On the other hand, I have my father’s eyebrows and chin, his explosive temper, and, it seems, a pathetic unwillingness to move from my bed, even for the end of the world.
In material terms, I inherited everything from him, including the money I used to buy this apartment and these spiral-bound notebooks in which I write. When I was emptying the house in Educación I found scarcely anything that might have belonged to Teresa beyond a few photos, some books on political theory, and two letters: the one she left on my father’s night table when she went away and another, which she mailed to him from Chiapas shortly before her death.
Daniel Saldaña París is an essayist, poet, and novelist born in Mexico City. His work has appeared in BOMB, Guernica, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, the Guardian, and elsewhere.
Christina MacSweeney was awarded the 2016 Valle Inclán Translation Prize for her translation of Valeria Luiselli’s The Story of My Teeth, and her translation of Daniel Saldaña París’s Among Strange Victims was a finalist for the 2017 Best Translated Book Award. She works regularly with authors such as Elvira Navarro, Verónica Gerber Bicecci, and Julián Herbert.
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