Quesadillas by Neel Mukherjee Rosalind Harvey Juan Pablo Villalobos Page A
Tags: spanish, Mexico, Family, Satire, Twins, Contemporary Fiction, translation, Literary Fiction, Novel, Brothers, politicians, Comedy, Novella, Elections, Corruption, Middle class, Translated fiction, Rite of passage, pilgrims, electoral fraud, Guardian First Book Award, Mexican food, quesadillas, tortillas, Greek names, bovine insemination, Polish immigrants, Mexican politics, Synarchists, PRI, PEN Translates!, PEN Promotes!, watermelons, acacias, Jalisco, Lagos, Orestes, Winner English Pen Award, Pink Floyd, Aristotle, Archilocus, Callimachus, Electra, Castor, Pollux
Ads: Link
home. This was the major temperamental difference between Aristotle and me: he needed a momentous project to justify what he was doing, while I made do with a lousy excuse.
In spite of his outrageous claims, Aristotle’s theories lacked originality. He had plagiarised them straight from the magazines his only schoolfriend lent him. This was the other big novelty in my brother’s life: he now had a friend, whose nickname was Epi, although he hardly counted because my brother was more his nurse than a friend; our teachers had enlisted Aristotle to go everywhere with the boy. Epi suffered from epileptic fits and Aristotle had been entrusted with a little device with a button he had to press in case of a seizure.
Epi’s magazines specialised in belittling the inhabitants of planet Earth. All of humanity’s advances and great works were explained by the presence of extraterrestrials. The Mayan and Egyptian pyramids, the Phoenician sailing routes, the great inventions of the Chinese, the philosophical systems of ancient Greece: all were gifts from beings who had come from the stars. On the letters pages, readers told of abductions, UFO sightings and extraterrestrial genetic experiments. This was where Aristotle found the final piece for his jigsaw puzzle: the value our little brothers’ genes would have for the aliens, due to their being pretend twins.
‘They’re collecting all kinds of specimens. Tall people, short people, fair people, dark people, women, men, children, redheads, albinos, twins, triplets …’
‘And why do they take them?’
‘Why do you think? To cross them, to do experiments on them!’
The puzzle Aristotle had put together had pieces from many different places, forcibly assembled with the tenacity of desperation. The resulting image was chaotic, amorphous; disconnected shapes that instead of suggesting a meaning only sustained an absurdity. It was exactly what we needed: it was the map that would guide our footsteps.
It took us a while to put the plan into action because it depended on the coincidence of various external factors: on my father’s absence from home, on the relaxation of maternal supervision, on my younger siblings being otherwise entertained and on the neighbours being away. It seemed impossible, almost as impossible as the pretend twins having been abducted by aliens, but one day it happened, a day on which the law of probability decided to come down on our side. Before setting off, we jumped over the Poles’ garden wall, got into their house through the utility room and stole two rucksacks that we stuffed with provisions from the store cupboard. Oreos! Up yours, Jarek. We didn’t stick around to have a siesta, but we did at least take some blankets.
We fled the scene looking over our shoulders, practically running backwards. We could have gone without looking back, it would have had a more poetic impact, but it wouldn’t have been right: we had to make sure no one was following us. As a farewell view it was very depressing: our crummy little shoebox and the Poles’ mansion. Seen from a distance, our house looked like the Poles’ dog kennel – no, not even that. Or maybe, provided that the dog had died and hadn’t been replaced.
As well as thinking about our escape – sketchy, disjointed thoughts, to match the puzzle – and concentrating hard on trying to control my erratic cardiovascular functions, I couldn’t stop thinking about my younger siblings, the ones still at home. Now they’d be a svelte, three-child family, the lucky bastards; they’d be up to their necks in quesadillas and they hadn’t even done anything to deserve it. Would they be middle class at last?
Instead of heading straight down to the road that led to the town – a continuation of the San Juan highway – we walked cross-country, to avoid human contact, which meant we had to push our way through thousands of acacia trees. The town was so Catholic it was encircled with thorns. When we
In spite of his outrageous claims, Aristotle’s theories lacked originality. He had plagiarised them straight from the magazines his only schoolfriend lent him. This was the other big novelty in my brother’s life: he now had a friend, whose nickname was Epi, although he hardly counted because my brother was more his nurse than a friend; our teachers had enlisted Aristotle to go everywhere with the boy. Epi suffered from epileptic fits and Aristotle had been entrusted with a little device with a button he had to press in case of a seizure.
Epi’s magazines specialised in belittling the inhabitants of planet Earth. All of humanity’s advances and great works were explained by the presence of extraterrestrials. The Mayan and Egyptian pyramids, the Phoenician sailing routes, the great inventions of the Chinese, the philosophical systems of ancient Greece: all were gifts from beings who had come from the stars. On the letters pages, readers told of abductions, UFO sightings and extraterrestrial genetic experiments. This was where Aristotle found the final piece for his jigsaw puzzle: the value our little brothers’ genes would have for the aliens, due to their being pretend twins.
‘They’re collecting all kinds of specimens. Tall people, short people, fair people, dark people, women, men, children, redheads, albinos, twins, triplets …’
‘And why do they take them?’
‘Why do you think? To cross them, to do experiments on them!’
The puzzle Aristotle had put together had pieces from many different places, forcibly assembled with the tenacity of desperation. The resulting image was chaotic, amorphous; disconnected shapes that instead of suggesting a meaning only sustained an absurdity. It was exactly what we needed: it was the map that would guide our footsteps.
It took us a while to put the plan into action because it depended on the coincidence of various external factors: on my father’s absence from home, on the relaxation of maternal supervision, on my younger siblings being otherwise entertained and on the neighbours being away. It seemed impossible, almost as impossible as the pretend twins having been abducted by aliens, but one day it happened, a day on which the law of probability decided to come down on our side. Before setting off, we jumped over the Poles’ garden wall, got into their house through the utility room and stole two rucksacks that we stuffed with provisions from the store cupboard. Oreos! Up yours, Jarek. We didn’t stick around to have a siesta, but we did at least take some blankets.
We fled the scene looking over our shoulders, practically running backwards. We could have gone without looking back, it would have had a more poetic impact, but it wouldn’t have been right: we had to make sure no one was following us. As a farewell view it was very depressing: our crummy little shoebox and the Poles’ mansion. Seen from a distance, our house looked like the Poles’ dog kennel – no, not even that. Or maybe, provided that the dog had died and hadn’t been replaced.
As well as thinking about our escape – sketchy, disjointed thoughts, to match the puzzle – and concentrating hard on trying to control my erratic cardiovascular functions, I couldn’t stop thinking about my younger siblings, the ones still at home. Now they’d be a svelte, three-child family, the lucky bastards; they’d be up to their necks in quesadillas and they hadn’t even done anything to deserve it. Would they be middle class at last?
Instead of heading straight down to the road that led to the town – a continuation of the San Juan highway – we walked cross-country, to avoid human contact, which meant we had to push our way through thousands of acacia trees. The town was so Catholic it was encircled with thorns. When we
Similar Books
