Norte Read online

  Praise for Edmundo Paz-Soldán and Norte

  “Edmundo Paz Soldán is one of the most creative voices in current Hispano-American literature.”—Mario Vargas Llosa

  “The issues addressed in [Norte] are . . . crucial to current debates about the border and immigration . . . compelling. . . . A thriller.”—Professor Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado

  “Norte is Paz Soldan’s best novel.”—Lluis Satorras, El Pais (Spain)

  “Edmundo Paz Soldán (Bolivia, 1967) has lived in the United States for nearly twenty years and knows a lot about the difficulty many of his countrymen face making their way in a society in which the coveted ‘dream’ is becoming less and less attainable. ‘There are many who lose themselves following this big dream,’ points out the writer. That is precisely the subject of his new novel, Norte, three stories linked by the theme of displacement.”—Emma Rodriguez, El Mundo (Madrid)

  “[Norte is] a rigorous and intelligent narrative that focuses more on the inner complexity of its characters than on simplifications and stereotypes. . . . Paz Soldán’s writing is compact, fluid, and totally absorbing. . . . The shifting between characters and times is accomplished with ease and agility, keeping the reader, from beginning to end, engrossed in the twists of the plot.”—Pedro Gandolfo, El Mercurio

  Norte

  A Novel

  Edmundo Paz Soldán

  Translated by Valerie Miles

  University of Chicago Press

  Chicago and London

  EDMUNDO PAZ SOLDÁN is the author of ten novels including Norte (2011), Los vivos y los muertos (2009), La materia del deseo (The Matter of Desire, 2001), and El Delirio de Turing (Turing’s Delirium, 2003), as well as four books of short stories. He has won the Bolivian National Book award twice (1992 and 2003), as well as the Juan Rulfo Short Story Award (1997). In 2006 he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship; he has also been a finalist for the Hammett award for best noir novel in Spanish (2012) and the Celsius award for best science fiction novel in Spanish (2015). His works have been translated into ten languages. His most recent novel is Iris (2014). He is professor of Latin American literature at Cornell University.

  VALERIE MILES is a translator, editor, writer, and professor. She is currently the director of Granta en español and the New York Review of Books in its Spanish translation. She is also a professor for literary translation at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Her recent works include A Thousand Forests in One Acorn: An Anthology of Spanish-Language Fiction (2014), Because She Never Asked (2015), a translation of Enrique Vila-Matas’s work Porque ella no lo pidió, and This Too Shall Pass, a translation of Milena Busquetʼs novel También esto pasará (2016).

  The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

  The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

  NORTE © 2011 Edmundo Paz Soldán Random House Mondadori, S.A. Author represented by Silvia Bastos S.L., Agencia Literaria in conjunction with Anne Edelstein Literary Agency, LLC.

  English translation and Translator’s Note © 2016 by Valerie Miles

  All rights reserved. Published 2016.

  Printed in the United States of America

  25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 1 2 3 4 5

  ISBN-13: 978-0-226-20720-9 (paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-226-20734-6 (e-book)

  DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226207346.001.0001

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Paz Soldán, Edmundo, 1967– author. | Miles, Valerie, 1963– translator.

  Title: Norte : a novel / Edmundo Paz Soldán ; translated by Valerie Miles.

  Description: Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016018244 | ISBN 9780226207209 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226207346 (e-book)

  Classification: LCC PQ7820.P39 N6713 2016 | DDC 863/.64—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016018244

  This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).

  To Lily

  And you, why do you have to be on this side?

  Yuri Herrera, Kingdom Cons

  As to the majority of murderers, they are very incorrect characters.

  Thomas De Quincey, On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts

  Evil does not exist; once you have crossed the threshold, all is good. Once in another world, you must hold your tongue.

  Franz Kafka, Diaries 1914–1923, January 19, 1922

  Contents

  ONE

  1. Villa Ahumada, northern Mexico, 1984

  2. Landslide, Texas, 2008

  3. Stockton, California, 1931

  4. Villa Ahumada, 1984

  5. Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, 1985

  6. Landslide, 1985

  TWO

  1. Landslide, 2008

  2. Stockton, 1931–1948

  3. Ciudad Juárez, México–Smithsville, Texas, 1985

  4. Smithsville, Texas, 1985

  5. Ciudad Juárez, Mexico; various US cities, 1985–1988

  6. Landslide, 2008

  7. Starke, Florida, 1988–1994

  THREE

  1. Landslide, 2008

  2. Ciudad Juárez; Villa Ahumada, 1994

  3. Auburn, California, 1948–1952

  4. Landslide, 2008–2009

  5. Rodeo, Mexico; various US cities, 1994–1997

  6. Landslide, 1997

  FOUR

  1. Auburn, 1952–1959

  2. Landslide, 2009

  3. Houston, Texas, 1999

  4. La Grange, Texas, 1999

  5. Landslide, 2009

  6. Rodeo, 1999

  FIVE

  1. Auburn, 1959–1963

  2. Rodeo, 1999

  3. Landslide, 2009

  4. Texas and New Mexico, 1999

  5. Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1999

  6. Landslide, 2009

  7. Landslide, 1999

  Epilogue: Huntsville, Texas, 1999–2009

  Notes and Acknowledgments

  Translator’s Note

  ONE

  1

  Villa Ahumada, Northern Mexico, 1984

  He dropped out of school to hang out more with his cousins. He liked to watch them working the crowds at the market and train station, picking pockets or snatching bags, though he didn’t take part himself. His cousins tried to avoid confrontation whenever possible but didn’t shy away from a little violence if it came down to it. In darker alleys they’d flash their knives, which was usually enough to persuade their victims to give in without a fight. The police knew about them but left them alone as long as they stuck to petty theft, no bloodshed.

  Around midnight they’d head over to the California, the only strip club whose bouncer would let Jesús in as long as they greased his palm a little bit. Jesús had a baby face and was slightly built, so he looked even younger than his fifteen years. The California served a cheap, nasty signature shot made of sotol and strawberry Nesquik in milk, called a “Pink Panther.” They’d throw a few back and order some beers, ogle the strippers shimmying under the neon lights. They were known as troublemakers and, even worse, as bad tippers, so most of the women kept their distance. Only Quica, one of the older whores, was ever happy to see them; she hated sleeping alone in her rented room down by the river. Quica would cruise from table to table and lower her rates to steal clients from the Guatemalan girl named Suzy, a peroxide blonde with a bob and pneumatic tits, or from Patricia, the bimbo from Guadalajara who planned on ditching out as soon as she had enough cash to pay the coyote to cross the border. There wasn’t much else for Quica, she was twice their age. She tried not to let it get to her, though. She might have loved the girls like daughters, though she swore no daughter of hers would ever turn into lowlife
putas like them.

  At three in the morning Quica finally told them it was time to go, but Medardo said, “Let’s wait till the song’s over, I love Chavela.” Justino seized the opportunity to cop a feel and said, “You got a great ass, lady!” Sometimes she’d sleep with Medardo, other times with Justino. She figured Jesús was the type that got off by watching; she’d call him over, tell him to join in, but he always stayed on the couch and beat off.

  One Thursday Jesús’s mother asked if he would stay in and babysit his younger sister over the weekend, she had work in Júarez and would be back on Monday. He said fine, for a little cash.

  That Friday night Jesús lay sprawled on his mattress with its broken springs and piss stains, at the foot of the bed his mother and María Luisa shared. The room stank of kerosene, and the stale kitchen odors seeped into everything.

  María Luisa was asleep. Jesús killed time staring at the posters of Mil Máscaras on the wall. One of them showed the wrestler soaring high above Canek in a magnificent jump while El Halcón eyeballed him menacingly. Another was a movie print of Misterio en las Bermudas starring El Santo and Blue Demon. Jesús liked lucha libre for being a rough sport with spectacular maneuvers like the slingshot crossbody or the suicide dive. He had four masks of his own and a wrestling action figure, a parting gift from his father before he crossed the border into thin air.

  That’s what he was doing when he dozed off.

  A sudden noise roused him from sleep. He opened his eyes to a half squint and pawed at his face, trying to remove the mask he had been wearing in his dream. It irritated him not to find it. Slippery raindrops clung to the window.

  Jesús straightened and sat up on the mattress; he felt edgy, as if he were afraid he might turn into a monster like he’d done in a repeating dream so many times. Dawn was breaking and the first light of morning filtered into the room. His eyes tried to focus, to sharpen the contours of things, until they fixed on the bed where María Luisa lay. There she was, Jesús thought, all alone.

  He moved in a little closer, watching her, noticing how her black hair framed her face, how her eyes were closed, her breathing measured. A pang of fear mixed with titillation gripped his stomach like an electric current. María Luisa was eleven now, her breasts were developing, you could see them pressing against her clothes, getting the neighborhood boys all riled up. She’d always been a pretty girl, with pouty lips held in a gesture of wonder before the world, and wide, almond-shaped eyes whose deep green contrasted with the cinnamon tone of her skin. She was filling out, swelling, growing restless.

  Several hushed minutes passed.

  Jesús climbed onto the bed.

  “Wh-what you doing?”

  “I just . . . I wanted to visit with you.”

  “Mom’s gonna have a fit, Jesús.”

  “She don’t have to find out. You want me to stay or not?”

  “Mom’s gonna have a fit.”

  It aggravated him to see how difficult she was to figure out anymore, and it’d been this way for a few years now. She used to be so easy, so see-through, like she was made of glass. Mamá had had a hard time keeping things together after Papá left, so Jesús and María Luisa had stuck together a lot. They shared a bed, and at night he would let her keep the light on since she was scared of the dark. Then when Mamá got home from the cantina, she’d stretch out in the middle of them. Most of their afternoons were spent playing in a hollow tree in a field near their home. He’d make up stories inspired in the radio serials he liked to listen to so much, about grave robbers, killer mummies and the undead. Things had gone on that way for a few years until Mamá made him start sleeping by himself on the old mattress he and Luisa had shared before Papá left. He slept there on the floor now, while Luisa spent all her time with her school friends. She was slipping through his fingers and he couldn’t do anything about it. He asked her to sleep with him like they used to one day when he was feeling depressed, but she answered with a curt “We can’t,” and he said, “We can wait till Mom’s asleep,” and again she said decisively “We can’t.”

  Jesús rolled on top of her now and tried to kiss her, but she slapped him in the face and jumped off the bed. “Are you loco?” she said, trying to keep cool, self-assured. “You’re not allowed to do that.”

  He recovered from the slap. How easy it would be for him just to corner her and take what he wanted. But that wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

  “You gonna be sorry you did that, hermanita,” he said.

  She turned around and strode out of the room, into the kitchen.

  Jesús lay back down on his mattress and plunged his face into the pillow.

  When the sun finally came up, he was still awake.

  He found his cousins sitting near the river, on the far side of an iron archway by the soccer field. They were sitting quietly, watching a game. Justino followed the ball closely; the metal buckles of his black boots flashing in the sunlight. Medardo’s mustache looked like a theater prop.

  Medardo and Justino were a few years older than Jesús. Medardo had done a three-month stint in prison for running stolen cars across the border, and Justino had had to skip town for a few years, until the rumors of his having raped a neighbor girl died down (“she’s a hot piece of ass for sure, but it wasn’t me, all I did was stick my fingers up her pussy a little bit”).

  They stood up to leave and Jesús followed behind. They strode down a hill to the riverbank and followed a pathway that led through piles of debris at a dumpsite. Jesús had the creepy feeling that someone was watching him from the mountain of garbage: he finally spotted the blue eyes of a doll that were staring, wide-eyed, straight at him. The boys stopped under a low bridge where bats were slumbering along the ceiling, hanging, waiting for twilight to fall.

  The bridge groaned with the weight of the trucks passing overhead. Would the structure hold? What if it collapsed and crushed them?

  Medardo pulled a plastic bag from one of his socks and inhaled deeply. He passed it over to Justino, who did the same. Justino handed it to Jesús, who wedged his nose into the bag and breathed in the fumes that smelled like fresh wood.

  They pulled out the bottle of sotol. Jesús took a swig and it burned his throat. He started giggling hysterically and had to make an effort to control himself.

  There was more glue and more sotol, until Jesús finally stretched out on the ground. His mind wandered back to a time he was with Papá and María Luisa strolling the streets of Villa Ahumada; whenever the circus came to Juárez or Chihuahua they’d go see it together. Papá would spoil them buying all kinds of candy and toys. He had taken some accounting classes and was good with numbers, but work was scarce back then. He did odd jobs to make ends meet, from managing a boxing club to running a pawnshop called La Infalible. Papá developed a little side business while he was working at La Infalible, keeping part of people’s payments and then lending it to others at bargain rates. The last few months before he left were like a bonanza: they got a black-and-white television set, there was meat and fruit on the table, they even bought some new clothes. It didn’t last long, though. One night he gathered the family into the kitchen and told them he had to go look for work across the border. The sweat beaded on his forehead and he wiped it away, looking around anxiously. He promised us he’d be back soon. María Luisa bawled, but Jesús was optimistic: Papá had never let them down before. He left the next morning at the crack of dawn, before Jesús got up. Eventually Jesús would come to understand that it wouldn’t be easy for him to come back. The owner of La Infalible had detected the missing funds and had threatened to kill him if he didn’t pay the money back.

  Jesús cackled anxiously. Then he bawled. He laughed again. Finally he fell asleep.

  On Monday morning, Jesús cruised over to María Luisa’s school, Padre Pro. He waited for gym class to start, then stood at the fence to check out how the girls were filling out. María Luisa pretended not to see him there, but Jesús knew she could feel his presence, watchin
g her. A nun came over to scold him and she called security, a man with a beer gut who promised to crush his skull if he ever saw him in the vicinity again.

  Jesús found his cousins in the market this time. They were sharing a plate of meat and beans and drinking horchatas. A stench of stale piss seeped from the nearby urinals.

  Medardo was all worked up because Suzy had rejected his advances the night before. “All I did was touch her waist and she slapped me.”

  “I saw her,” Jesús said, “but I didn’t know it got you so pissed off.”

  “I wish it didn’t, but I’m still bent about it wey. Fucking bitch said you look but you don’t touch. So I yelled cunt, what you dress that way for then. You pay me, she said, we’ll understand each other, so I go baby I never pay cause the ladies just love to play with my bazooka. And she told me to grow up before I talk back again. And we’re the same fucking age, the puta!”

  Jesús tried to calm Justino down but only made things worse: “Who does the bitch think she is, so full of herself, thinks we’re a waste of time or something.”

  “Yeah, well I know where the bitch lives,” Justino said. “We could wait for her to get home.”

  “And beat the shit out of her?” Jesús asked.

  “First things first,” Medardo said. “Give her a little of my good stuff, wey.”

  Jesús liked the idea. Suzy had been nice enough to him in the California, but she had a way of looking down her nose, acting all superior when she talked to him that irked him, like she was his mother or something. As if her peroxide hair and diamond belly-button stud were too good for him, like those tights stretched hard over long sexy legs, the thigh-high stiletto boots, were out of his league, only for truck drivers and polleros. But Jesús had graduated from being a mere bystander to his primos; he’d robbed his first couple as they left the station the other day, and he’d done a good job. He swiped the woman’s pearl necklace right from her throat and, when the man ran after him, pulled a knife on him, stopping him cold in his tracks. The pearls were fake but no matter, he proved he could do it and that’s what counted.