Spiritual Choreographies - Softcover

Labbé, Carlos

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1940953979 ISBN 13: 9781940953977

Publisher: Open Letter, 2019

Synopsis

By blinking his eyes and moving his pupils, a paraplegic man―the onetime vocalist in a famous rock band―composes a kind of anti-biography that is corrected and expanded upon by an unknown editor. Alternating between the vocalist’s impressionistic recollections and the editor’s “corrections,” an asynchronous story emerges, evoking the vocalist’s childhood in southern Chile and telling of the rise and fall of the band that he grew up to lead, while hinting at a multiplicity of other narrative possibilities.

About this title

About the Author:

Carlos Labbé, one of Granta's "Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists," was born in Chile and is the author of seven novels, including Navidad & Matanza and Loquela, and three collections of short stories. In addition to his writings he is a musician, and has released three albums. He is a co-editor at Sangria, a publishing house based in Santiago and Brooklyn, where he translates and runs workshops. He also writes literary essays, the most notable ones on Juan Carlos Onetti, Diamela Eltit and Roberto Bolańo. Three of his novels are available from Open Letter Books.

Will Vanderhyden received an MA in Literary Translation Studies from the University of Rochester. He has translated fiction by Carlos Labbé, Edgardo Cozarinsky, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Juan Marsé, Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, Rodrigo Fresán, and Elvio Gandolfo. He received NEA and Lannan fellowships to translate Rodrigo Fresán's novel, The Invented Part, which won the 2018 Best Translated Book Award.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

9. CORRECTION

The choreography needs audience, needs someone to witness its movements. The damp twilight wind slammed shut the kitchen window. She was cutting leeks at the sink when the collision of the frame and the pane startled her; the shards of glass turned to fragments against the floor a few meters away. The shock made her involuntarily twist the knife across the back of her left hand. When the boy entered the kitchen, hair mussed, wearing pajamas―mother, what was that noise?, his question―she was standing there, staring at the shape of that small wound under the stream of water, as if it reminded her of some profound, lost thing. One sound, two, a counterpoint, the dark night looking out at waves, she thought. And then there was just her blood, staining the water in the sink. She brought her hand to her mouth before she ruined the vegetable with that foul taste, hers.

“Go shower, we’re eating soon. And bring him down,” she told the boy.

Ten minutes later they were all sitting in silence around the kitchen table. She had to quicken her breathing and open her eyes: the little wound on her hand kept her from concentrating, pulsing there in the dark, like the double of an another wound on the palm of the hand of a man who in her memory recoiled from a seashell, from a broken bottle, tears and sweat; she was naked, on the wave-packed sand, wet. I was another person back then, she thought.

“Life here begins many times,” the vocalist blurted out unexpectedly from his wheelchair.

He did so without solemnity, but with a voice not his own.

It made her uneasy: according to the doctors, his neurological damage rendered speech impossible, but that was the third time in a year he’d spoken during meditation. For an instant, the boy opened his eyes too; he and his mother exchanged glances just as a current of air came in through the broken window and caused a distant door―the bathroom door, she guessed―to slam. Then they heard the beep, beep, beep of the alarm being deactivated at the front entrance. It was the other, coming back from the recording studio. He came in carrying a paper bag, set it down in the middle of the table, and went into the kitchen. She reached out her fingers, removed a still-warm roll, and tore it open, scanning with her eyes, in vain, for the jam. The other shut the refrigerator with his foot, sat down; he grabbed the jar of jam and set it beside her plate―she gave him a grateful smile in return―and turned to the vocalist, offering him a sip of the beer he held in his hand.

Then he raised the can and made a toast:

“Bless Him. I finished writing the bloody score today.”

The boy pinched an unlit cigarette between his lips as he applauded. The movement of his hands knocked over the milk carton, which, striking the floor, bounced back up and knocked the jam onto the floor. Suddenly irritated, she couldn’t take her eyes off the can of beer next to him as she attempted to clean the floor with a spoon. The other brought his hands together and bent down beside her.

―The Man wanted to tell me something last night, I’m sure of it―the boy blurted out.

The vocalist tried to grimace through his paralysis.

“Was the show any good?” she asked.

“It’s been proven that The Man is the greatest baritone in the history of humanity, mother. He’s never once put on an imperfect performance.”

“That’s why he’s in the bubblegum music.”

The other burst out laughing at his own comment. She, all the while, watched her son speak, but couldn’t understand what he was saying. Were they speaking in Chezungun again to mess with her, to exclude her? All she heard was laughter and―it’s absurd, she said to herself, we’re miles from the ocean―the sound of waves breaking on the beach, swelling with wind and rain. Another spark in her memory: the beach’s thick sand clinging to her thighs as she spread her legs, the other’s alcoholic stench on the nape of her neck, his moan in the dark: leave us alone.

“I made my way through the crowd up to the first row, really. And there I am transfixed, face to face with The Man, modulating the final guitar solo with the vocoder implanted in one of his molars. Then he sees me, I’m sure. He’s seen me and wants to tell me something, something only he knows, something for my ears alone.”

“My dearest, dearest lad,” the other murmured with a sigh. “Do not forget the stage’s bright lights are there to blind the performers just enough.”

She carried the plates and cups to the dishwasher as the volume of the conversation rose. According to the boy, the fact that The Man was the first clone to ever produce positive sales numbers for the company proved nothing in terms of his musical refinement, nor did it provide any credible proof as to whether or not he was capable of feeling emotions when he sang.

“Haven’t you ever seen a stranger’s face pass quickly by a window, the face of a stranger to whom you most impart some important thing, a face that never comes entirely into focus, but that you just have to speak to? I swear that’s what happened to The Man when he saw me.”

She decided to leave them to their discussion and take him in his wheelchair to the bedroom. She had the urge to purchase a Quyasullu movie for the four of them to watch together while they ate dessert. She helped prop him up in the bed, brought a few pillows in from the living room to support his back. When she gave him the remote control, he gripped her hand, his eyes fixing on that fresh wound, just beginning to heal. She wanted to say, to ask him one, two, three times the same question about the words he’d babbled during meditation: if, after all these weeks correcting the book about The Band on his screen, he could vocalize again, if something had helped him to say what he said, and to what end. Then the wind blew, causing a current of air to slam another door. A door somewhere in the apartment. The front door?, she wondered.

About this edition

• Publisher: Open Letter
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1940953979
• ISBN 13: 9781940953977
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 120