Giobany Arévalo > Gabriela Torres Olivares >Anuar Jalife - Literal

LIBROS BOOKS CD RECORDS
ALMOST IDEOGRAMATIC
Brandon G. Holmquest
Alejandro Zambra
Bonsai,
Malville House,
Brooklyn, NY, 2009.
Translated
by Carolina de Robertis
A deceptively clever novella that seeks, on
every level, to mimic the form of the titular
tree, Alejandro Zambra’s Bonsai fi rst presents
itself as a simple boy-meets-girl story. What
follows is a series of narrative and formal
contortions which deviate pleasantly from
anything the boy-meets-girl set up might
reasonably imply. Zambra likewise winds his
way over, above and around what might be
expected from a more or less self-conciously
literary (the boy and girl lie to one another
about having read Proust), meta-fi ctional
(the book’s fi rst line gives away the ending),
contemporary (there’s a fair amount of sex,
drugs and mortality) novella by Chilean (you
know who). The book is indeed inventive,
though not merely. The literary acrobatics
are decidely in the service of the story, or, to
put it another way, the form is never more
than an extension of content. And vice versa.
What’s impressive is that the entire thing is
welded to the idea and image of a bonsai
in way that is almost ideogramatic. Zambra
wrote in the Colombian journal piedepágina
that the book’s origin was fi rst suggested by
a newspaper “photograph of a tree covered
in a transparent fabric,” part of Christo and
Jeanne Claude’s Wrapped Trees series. This
set him off on the usual stumbling path towards
something. The fi nal result is a very
short book that is nearly an exact analogue
for that “transparent fabric.” The translation
by Carolina de Robertis, who has a novel of
her own coming out later this year, is high
quality. She performs particularly impressive
acrobatics in a tricky passage early on where
fi ve different terms for the sexual act are humorously
contrasted with some supposed
national characteristics thrown in. This sort of
thing can be very diffi cult to capture at all, and
often is lost on English-readers who lack the
cultural details common to Latin Americans.
De Robertis just mows it down and makes it
look rather easy. Bonsai is a shockingly quick
read at an infl ated 83 pages and is satisfying
for that very reason. You consume it whole.
Zambra’s last couple of books, including this
one, have been published by Anagrama,
which is basically Spanish for “New Directions,”
so I think we all might want to keep
an eye on him from now on.
AIDS HOSPICE
David D. Medina
Mario Bellatin
Beauty Salon,
City Lights,
San Francisco, 2009.
Translated
by Kurt Hollander
Mexican writer Mario Bellatín has created a rare
literary feat: in just 63 pages he has produced
a novella that sparkles with beauty and clarity
as it delves into one of the most horrifying and
shunned diseases of our times–AIDS.
In Beauty Salon, the narrator is a transvestite
hairdresser who has converted his
business into a makeshift AIDS hospice. He
runs the place by himself, and with a sense
of morbid humor, he calls it the Terminal because
he takes in only men who are about to
die and cannot fi nd anyone to care for them.
The nameless narrator operates the Terminal
with strict rules and does not allow doctors,
medicine, herbal remedies, or religious
icons. Women are also not welcomed. When
his place was a beauty salon, the narrator
explains, he spent a lot of time making the
women beautiful and he does not want to
see his work go to waste.
When he operated the salon, the narrator
got the idea of installing aquariums to
make the women feel as if “they were submerged
in crystal clear water, rejuvenated
and beautiful…” He became a fi sh collector,
buying an assortment of fi sh that gave him
pleasure as he watched their colorful bodies
streak through the water. But as death enters
the salon, the fi sh perish.
Bellatin © Mastrangelo Reino
The freshness of the aquariums is a
sharp contrast to the dreary existence of the
Terminal, but they also serve as a metaphor
for the way people view AIDS victims. People
see fi sh through a glass container, from a distance,
and when one of them dies, they are
scooped up and fl ushed down the toilet. In
the story, AIDS victims are buried in a paupers’
grave without a ceremony.
In an unemotional fashion, the narrator
tells his story about his sexual exploits as a
transvestite, his experiences in bathhouses
and his downfall from a deadly disease. He
tells a poignant story about becoming affectionate
with one of the patients, whom he
calls “guests,” only to see the young man die
later. Thereafter, the narrator decided never
to become attached to his guests. The narrator
is so resigned to his lot that he appears
saintly as he goes about helping the AIDS victims
die a humane death.
AIDS is never mentioned in the book;
it is referred to only as “the disease.” Also,
the location of the story remains vague and
the characters remain nameless, anonymous
in an uncaring world. As in the book, many
people in the real world still believe that AIDS
victims have brought about their own misfortune
and deserve to be punished.
Written in simple sentences that fl ow effortlessly
without the interruptions of chapters,
Beauty Salon is a lyrical piece about how
a disease is turning its victims into pariahs, and
as a result has made our society less human.
Mario Bellatín had the courage to write
about this taboo in a country that is known
for its homophobia, and in return he was rewarded
with a little book of deep beauty.
OTOÑO, 2009 LITERAL. VOCES LATINOAMERICANAS 53