The Taiga Syndrome E-Book

Cristina Rivera Garza

• Herausgeber: And Other Stories
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 111

Beschreibung

A fairy tale run amok, The Taiga Syndrome follows an unnamed Ex-Detective as she searches for a couple that has fled to the far reaches of the Earth. A betrayed husband is convinced by a brief telegram that his second ex-wife wants him to track her down – that she wants to be found. He hires the Ex-Detective, who sets out with a translator into a snowy, hostile forest where strange things happen and translation serves to betray both sense and the senses. The stories of Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood haunt the Ex-Detective's quest. As she enters a territory overrun with the primitive excesses of capitalism – accumulation and expulsion, corruption and cruelty –the lessons of her journey unfold: that sometimes leaving everything behind is the only thing left to do.

Leseprobe

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‘An explosive writer yet to be fully accounted for in English.’

Lina Meruane

‘Cristina Rivera Garza does not respect what is expected of a writer, of a novel, of language. She is an agitator.’

Yuri Herrera

‘Innovative Mexican author Rivera Garza’s dazzling speculative noir novel is narrated by a woman hired to find a man’s missing second wife … As she tracks the mysterious couple over snow-covered trails in the boreal forest, the universe becomes eerie and unpredictable. She encounters a feral boy, a ferocious wolf, earthy villagers and wild lumberjacks. Rivera Garza invokes Hansel and Gretel as she spins her marvellous, atmospheric tale.’

Jane Ciabattari, BBC.com, ‘The 10 Best Books of 2018’

‘Diaphanously translated by Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana, this deceivingly spare, noir fairy tale can be read (devoured) at a sitting, but the subconscious wounds it (in)exacts may fester in one’s non-fiction ever after.’

Minor Literature(s)

‘Rivera Garza’s gorgeous, propulsive novel will haunt readers long after it’s finished.’

Publishers Weekly, starred review

‘Like the best speculative fiction, it follows the sinuous paths of its own logic but gives the reader plenty of room to play. Fans of fairy tales and detective stories, Kathryn Davis and Idra Novey, will all find something to love. An eerie, slippery gem of a book.’

Kirkus Reviews, starred review

‘Readers of this book will encounter one of the most fiercely original literary voices from Latin America.’

Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, Los Angeles Review of Books

‘This insanely creepy & brilliant book by the incomparable Cristina Rivera Garza will keep you awake at night. Garza is a master of atmosphere. A detective novel directed by David Lynch & narrated by Bolaño.’

Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore

‘Mystery, sci-fi, Socratic dialogue, retelling of “Hansel and Gretel”: The Taiga Syndrome is a delightful shape-shifter of a novel.’

Jonathan Woollen, Politics & Prose

‘Come for the satisfying sense of utter disorientation, stay for the gangly homunculus that bursts out of the woman’s mouth in the middle of the night.’

Literary Hub, ‘Some Like it Dark: Terror in Translation’

‘Wood, snow, blood: old stories. The witch in the forest, the breadcrumb trail, the grandmother-skinned wolf – everybody’s here, in this wild little book, breath steaming humid in the cold air.’

Sarah McCarry, Tor.com

‘Rivera Garza belongs to the tradition of iconoclastic writers who question why our world has to be the way it is. This is the sort of powerful inquiry that often brings art to its most immersive, rewarding, and generative place. Read her books and explore your own taiga.’

Veronica Scott Esposito, Literary Hub

‘In plain, lyrical language, [Rivera] Garza drapes a poetic hush over the narrative, creating an unsettling fable-like world. It’s a mystery that creeps, with careful, steady steps.’

Laura Adamczyk, The A.V. Club

This edition first published in 2019 in the UK by And Other Stories Sheffield – London – New Yorkwww.andotherstories.org

First published as El mal de la taiga in 2012 by Tusquets Editores Copyright © 2012 by Cristina Rivera Garza

English language translation copyright © Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana, 2018

First English-language edition published in the USA in 2018 by Dorothy, a publishing project.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transported in any form by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book. The right of Cristina Rivera Garza to be identified as author of this work and Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana to be identified as the translators of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or places is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-1-911508-68-7 eBook ISBN: 978-1-911508-69-4

Typesetting and eBook: Tetragon, London; Proofreader: Sarah Terry; Graphic Design: Steven Marsden.

Cover Image: ‘The November Meteors’, Étienne Léopold Trouvelot, 1882. Reproduced courtesy of The New York Public Library, Rare Book Division.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book was supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

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Contents

I: The SameII: The ContractIII: Going for NothingIV: The PromiseV: Everything Falls at the Same RateVI: The Hidden CameraVII. Tongue to TongueVIII: The Ferocious WolfIX: There Is a Waterwheel OutsideX: Dance TheoryXI: The PoolXII: Those ThingsXIII: L’Enfant sauvageXIV: PlacentaXV: Lap DanceXVI: Women Think Only about SexXVII: An Underwhelming FaceXVIII: I Would Be Stopped by the DarkXIX: Cruelty Never IsXX: Something Died HereXXI: The Large Window that VibratesXXII: A Closed ForestXXIII: Playlist

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‌I: The Same

That they had lived there, they told me. In that house, there. And they pointed it out with an apprehension that could easily be mistaken for respect or fear. Their fingers barely peeked out from the cuffs of their heavy black coats. The smell of ash under their arms. Dirty nails. Dry lips. Their eyes, having discreetly moved toward where they were pointing, quickly returned to their original position, gazing straight ahead. “What are you really looking for?”—they asked without daring to say so. And I, who didn’t exactly know, followed their steps like a shadow, back to the village over snow-covered trails.

It wasn’t really a house, I should say first. I would have described what I saw on that morning, at the beginning of autumn, as a shack, maybe not even. A hovel. In any case, it was a habitable structure made from wood, cardboard, and lots of dry branches. It did have a roof, a ridged roof, and a pair of windows covered in thick transparent plastic instead of glass. It had the air of a last refuge. It gave the impression that beyond was only open space, and the law of the wilderness, and the sky, so blue, so high, above the wild.

I remember the cold. Above all, I remember the cold. I remember my clenched jaw, fists deep in my coat pockets.

They had arrived there, according to my information, at the beginning of winter. I had come to that conclusion because their last communication came from a telegram office in a border town about two hundred kilometers away. The telegram, addressed to the man who had hired me to investigate the case, said briefly and somewhat obliquely that they were never coming back: “WHAT ARE WE LETTING IN WHEN WE SAY GOODBYE?”

I took the case because I have always had an all-consuming weakness for forms of writing no longer in use: radiograms, stenography, telegrams. As soon as I placed my hands on the faded paper, I began to dream. The tips of my fingers skimmed the creases of the paper; the stale smell of age. Something hidden. Who would set out on such a journey? That couple, of course. Out of everyone, only those two. From what place, so far away in space, so far away in time, had this fistful of capital letters been sent? And what were the two of them hoping for? What had they let into their lives? That was what I wanted to know. From the start, that was what I wanted to understand.

The man had made an appointment with me in a café downtown, at four in the afternoon. I had only met him a few nights before, in front of images of a forest or of many forests. Oil paintings, X-rays. Installations.

“Do you like them?” he had asked me with an accent I wasn’t immediately able to identify.

I told him the truth. I told him yes.

“Do forests intrigue you?” he asked me again, placing a hand on the wall I was leaning against. Where the back of my neck rested.

I turned to look at the painting to my right: oil on wood, wire, resin. A forest within a forest. Something primordial.

“They do intrigue me,” I said, after considering it for a while.

“You don’t seem like the kind of person who would get lost in a forest,” he said as he took me by the elbow and, with a dexterity that was pure elegance, led me from inside the gallery toward the terrace.

“You’re right,” I told him. “Nor do I like being taken by the elbow,” I added.

He laughed, of course. White teeth, Adam’s apple quivering, the hint of a beard.

“Your face says that too,” he said when he returned with two flute glasses.

I remember the toast, the first one. I remember laughing at a face I couldn’t see—mine, which I was imagining so clearly. Its suspicious expression combined with a tacit sense of distance. My brow furrowed, my chin raised. I remember having said: “To the forest or forests.” Glass clinking.

“But you must know about the taiga syndrome, right?” he asked after he had finally stopped laughing, after taking a large sip from the effervescent liquid in his glass. “It seems,” he continued, almost whispering, “that certain inhabitants of the taiga begin to suffer terrible anxiety attacks and make suicidal attempts to escape.” He fell silent, though it seemed like he wanted to continue. “Impossible to do when you’re surrounded by the same terrain for five thousand kilometers,” he concluded with a sigh.

I remember the wolf. I saw him, an enormous wolf, gray against the snow. I saw his jaw: open. His eyes, his paws. I saw the red thread that extended from his tracks and slithered through the snow before momentarily getting lost in the trunk of a fir tree. I saw the fir, so majestic. Then it climbed, the red thread, through the warped branches, through the evergreen pine needles until high above it reached the green branches of another conifer. That was what made me look up at the sky, also gray, filled with thick jumbled clouds. What shade of gray? Ten minutes before a storm gray, of course. I didn’t hear anything, couldn’t hear anything, but I saw that the wolf was preparing to pounce. I saw his saliva, teeth, lips.

“The same,” I repeated, attempting to rein in the threads of the conversation.

“The same,” he said, recognizing my effort. “If you don’t catch them, wrestle them down, like in rugby, they might vanish forever in the immensity of the taiga.”

“The same,” I repeated. Sometimes seeing is just the confirmation of a fact.

It is difficult to know for sure when a case begins, at what moment one accepts an investigation. I suppose that, although the exchange of information and the negotiation of my contract didn’t happen until days later, on a summer afternoon, in the downtown café of a coastal city, the case of the mad couple of the taiga began right there, on the terrace of a gallery where a man with the hint of a thin blond beard had taken me by the elbow without my consent.

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‌II: The Contract

He had heard of my work, that’s what he said. He already knew about me when he took me by the elbow to cross the gallery and lead me toward the terrace. Had I noticed how dark the sky was that night? Had I known that the artist who painted/installed/sculpted/photocopied forests had told him I was, in fact, a detective?

As we talked, he drank his coffee and looked around. As we talked, he lowered his eyes and placed small cubes of sugar in the dark liquid. A spoon. Circles. Sometimes this is what being nervous looks like.

“It’s been a while since I worked,” I said. Though what I really wanted to say was: “Don’t you know about my many failures?”

The case of the woman who disappeared behind a whirlwind.

The case of the castrated men.

The case of the woman who gave her hand, literally. Without realizing it.

The case of the man who lived inside a whale for years.

The case of the woman who lost a jade ring.

“It’s better this way,” he said, as if he had heard me say something. Then, without missing a beat, he placed a leather briefcase on the table and began to open the lock with his long nervous fingers.

It was then that I saw the telegram, their last written message. There it was, on top of a pile of neatly organized documents: letters, maps, tickets, transcriptions, photocopies, envelopes. Sometimes, everything exists for the first time.

“I haven’t said yes,” I said as I touched the papers. “It’s been a while,” I insisted.

I remember how warm the wind was. The way the white linen curtains announced the proximity of the sea. Above all, I remember the salt. Opening the windows wide. I remember that the salt told us who we were. Or how.