The Revolt of Guadalajara, installment 5

A couple of months ago I began the serial translation of a 1937 novella by Dutch writer Jan Jacob Slauerhoff called The Revolt of Guadalajara. I'm going to try to be more disciplined about hashing it out but would be grateful for any insistent clamoring you could muster to that effect.

Finally in today's installment, we get some characters:

Chapter 1, pp. 11-15

Besides the churches and banks, Guadalajara also had a Gobierno Central, a representation of the federal government, a municipality, three hospitals, a Supreme Court, a tax office, four convents, an Episcopal hall, some ten big houses belonging to rich landowners and industrialists that could be called palacios with a bit of good will, and beyond that the city that, other than a number of stores and warehouses, consisted of low huts. Almost all larger buildings lay on the Avenida Central and formed the drab stretched-out skyline that was visible from the far horizon above the bald brown or grey-red plain and most resembled the back of a prehistoric animal, a crocodile or iguanodon.

In keeping with an obvious and unspoken agreement with the authorities that dated back to the era of slavery and continued in effect long after emancipation, other than the livery-coated or uniformed or priestly garbed servants of church and state, the Indians never came into the Avenida Central, such that it almost always lay dead and abandoned both in the heat of the day and in the dusky night. Only in the brief twilight hour did the carriages of the more distinguished residents pass to and fro, or a few men walk and sit on the terraces of the two cafés. Only for processions and a few national holidays did the Indians enter the Avenida too. Processions took place quite often, as the church authorities knew from centuries of experience that every people, however humbled and oppressed, must have occasional opportunity to push themselves up, to experience themselves en masse, hearing each other’s shouts, filling their noses with each other’s reeking. Coming together in the Avenida didn’t stir up any kind of mass consciousness of power; to the contrary. Devoid of will, the stream flowed in a single direction between the lines of the big buildings and was dissipated by the gendarmes once the parade had run its course. Contented, tired and sleepy they go back to their houses and rest or drink the rest of the holiday away, and rebellious thoughts never take root: they are tired and hoarse from screaming.

With the examples of Christian humility borne on litters and flagstaffs before them, they could vent their suppressed lust for life through shocking dances done to a music gone gradually over from the plodding tempos of the church to a dance beat. The hubbub of the city, the high gables on either side, these overpower them and then suddenly it is all over, the parade disbands on a silent square and they head docilely for home.

The high church authorities made the occasional remark about what they termed the degenerative influence of processions in the otherwise tranquil Guadalajara. But Monseigneur Valdés, who’d sat in the bishop’s seat over Guadalajara for twenty years, took up the defense in an articulate hand. Monseigneur Valdés wrote gladly and copiously. How otherwise could he employ his great gifts of spirit and heart?

What was this talented priest still doing stuck out in Guadalajara? Was it because of a foreboding that precisely here, in this city, something big was sure to pass? Or had he simply been forgotten? Or does the consistory of cardinals secretly have it in for great talents? Or was Monseigneur Valdés not who he took himself to be?

He took the first solution to be correct. God’s ways were inscrutable, surely something big was going to happen in Guadalajara. He never spoke about these expectations with the dean or the canons of the diocese. They believed only what they saw happen. But he did with a young Indian priest, Tarabana, who served in the little church of the Sagrado Corazón, in the middle of the old Indian neighborhood, and who wrote with a very legible hand.

Tarabana was not a pale, docile, stunted youth, like so many of his associates, he was lively, walked tall, secretly believed in the rebirth of his race.

Really it was a wonder that the authoritarian and priestly Valdés could stand this young man; or did he see reflected something of himself that never had come into its own? In the end a certain kind of intimacy had developed between them. Tarabana could listen for hours to the orations of the bishop. Usually they began along these lines:

‘Don’t be unhappy, Tarabana, with your little wooden church, any more than I am with my meager and remote diocese, that really should have had its seat on the council by now, long before González and Machado, who are less talented than I am. Something big is going to happen in Guadalajara, otherwise I wouldn’t still be here, it must be for something. It should have happened a long time ago, but we never know what obstacles stand in God’s way. He also likes to write destiny along crooked lines. But something’s coming! Just look once at Saint Iago, who has the most prophetic spirit of all the saints. Hasn’t he on the occasional rainy day ever had an ominous feeling?’

In this way he got the young priest all wound up. Tarabana often really would have liked to ask just exactly what was going to happen but he didn’t dare; when he had it on the tip of his tongue the bishop looked vacantly past him or suddenly began writing as if in midstream on a sheet of parchment that always lay ready. He’d been working for years now on a church history of Mexico, on the description of miracles witnessed in the area. If nothing happened in Guadalajara, at least in the time that he was still there, then his name would still become famous through the publication of these works. The Holy Father would reproach himself for having left Valdés moldering his whole life in Guadalajara, instead of giving him a place where he could shine.

Tarabana then stood wavering at the other end of the table. Should he go away or stay? Sometimes Valdés looked at him with boredom and confusion, in which case he knew for certain. Sometimes he stopped looking up altogether and then he off he went, swearing to himself never to return. After these visits he didn’t go to his church, where malice and brooding made it hard to hold it together, but to the hut where his parents still lived. It stood on the outskirts of the Indian quarter by the steeply pitched river that dribbled one day and ran dry the next.

Tarabana’s parents were among the poorest, but they had the good fortune of having only had one child, and a son at that. For this rare dearth of offspring—most averaged ten or more children—they thanked the gods and saints regularly.

The Revolt of Guadalajara, Chapter 1 installment 4

The whites could do as they pleased, take their women and cast them off again, teach their sons to be soldiers and to fight against them... If just once the old gods did decide to come after them, their gods wouldn’t even be able—despite their strength—to protect them. Really, they were sacrifices themselves! It was inconceivable, but if you really thought about it, you had to admit it! Jesus hung pale, bleeding and defenseless on the cross. Sebastian, the patron saint of a large parish, was shot through with arrows and lances and bathed in blood. John, so strong and bearded and muscled like no white person really was, had later allowed himself to be beheaded without a fight. Who were the strong ones?

The one half bled, the other was soft and sad, Mary, always with the child, Ursula, Agnes...

How did it happen that they turned out to be the powerful ones and ruled the world? They had other nameless gods they never spoke of, but that they carried with them everywhere; these kept their silence for a long time, but when they spoke it was with thunder, crashing and flame from the mouths of blunderbusses and muskets. Then they brought down destruction on their adversaries.

And besides these were gods in temples that no one ever got to see, that didn’t even make themselves known in noise and destruction, and these were the mightiest of all. They were fed with bars of gold that always were kept ready in vaults. And on small, colored papers were written the mighty prayers that crushed the entire world. The almighty white men themselves wrote a short prayer on a sheet of paper and with it got some of the gold that was really meant as food for the gods.

In Guadalajara there stood seven temples for the weak and sorrowful Christian gods: the Sé, two cathedrals and four parish churches, and three for the mightiest invisible gods: the Banco del Estado, Banco Hispano-Americano and Banco de Jalisco. In the Sé there was an old white high priest, named the bishop, in the cathedrals the nearly-white mestizos, in the parish churches the Indians... In the temples of the invisible gods a whole host of low priests served, the high ones never were seen, they sat in sanctuaries called private offices. The lower and poor believers had no access to these temples either, they were even chased off of the steps if, tired from a long trip to the city with humble wares, they sat down.

*

Life in the past quarter century was certainly better in Guadalajara and the environs. Barring getting sick or having accidents or too many children, one could live without going hungry all that often. For the most part there was some work to be had in the salt flats and the tin mines. And besides these and the soap-works (that didn’t go as well as they let on) a new industry had come thanks to the initiative of a philanthropic Veracruzian, who—no one knows why, because aside from the fevers Veracruz is a far more attractive city—had settled in Guadalajara. He was rich enough. After some time he’d established a couple of hat factories that operated free of any state or local subsidies and still paid a good wage. They didn’t make the majestic wide sombreros there that true Mexicans wore with such aristocratic grace. The Indians and mestizos from the region would have looked ridiculous wearing them, their narrow bony high yellow or dirty brown faces with the deepset eyes would have disappeared beneath them. Narrow, floppy hats were made there for cheap; everyone wore them.

The Revolt of Guadalajara, Chapter 1 part 2

Between two oceans, but far from both, on a stony, infertile plain, where irregular mesas alternate with surly, grey-green fields, where the rare shabby village and low trees stick out and hordes of shrubs lie silent and bald on the sandy banks of the riverbed that almost always streams with silt, lies Guadalajara, the capital of the state of Jalisco, one of the poorest and most backward in all of Mexico. [note to reader: yes, these are long-winded and occasionally even run-on sentences. I’m trying to preserve what I understand to be the intentional unwieldiness of the original, at least for now.] It was founded by one of the followers of Hernando Cortes, who went almost without mention in the history of the conquest and who was apportioned the least-promising spoils.

A long road ran from the South, where the government had its seat, to the distant bent-over barrier island in the North, now called Baja California. Guadalajara was originally nothing more than a depot for goods and food for passing expeditions. Later a few salt flats were exploited, a tin mine was discovered, a soap-works set up, and something of a harvest was eked out from the meager fields in the area. But the original residents, the Indians, didn’t get ahead as a result of any of this; instead, the conquerors kept everything for themselves and had the Indians work for them. They offered no resistance. The strongest took to the hills, from which perch they threatened the plains dwellers for a long time. The ones who stayed behind were gradually weakened. In the exchange of syphilis for tuberculosis, they fared badly. The forced labor in the salt flats, the soap works, the tin mines, and the glass blowers that were later established, was deadly to them. The abuse of strong drink replaced the rare but enormously therapeutic release provided by the old blood sacrifice festivals. The unruly were exiled, the meek retained.

Only in one of the outlying towns did one strain hold themselves pure and apart, supporting themselves with crude basketweaving that they themselves carried once every two months to the market in Aguascalientes, so as not to have any trade with Guadalajara.

Once there had also been an insurrection in and around Guadalajara: when wars of independence were waged throughout South America, republics sprang up like mushrooms out of the ground, merging and dividing, and often disappearing again after a brief existence; it had only lasted there for a very short time. After that no one gave any more thought to revolts. Languishing, sickly and in filth and poverty they lived on.

There were still remnants of the old sacrifices. Sometimes a child would go missing. The law didn’t trouble itself over it as long as it didn’t happen too often, even if the child later turned up mutilated or dead. In a place ringed by walls, not far from the city, the old misshapen idols still stood, weathered and crumbling, and another still more or less intact on an offshoot of the mountain chain. There was a vague legend that one day the sun wouldn’t go down and the gods would enter the city and devour the white people, but when and how would they tell the whites from the Indians? Many didn’t even know themselves, calling themselves white if in doubt, though under those circumstances would try to pass for Indians.

The gods were still brought offerings in secret, really so few that they must long since have grown displeased. The Christian gods made such large demands: no children, truth be told (except for those who were used for work in the monasteries), but money, lots of money, more than they could ever hope to raise. They always were coming up short, their products were always worth less than they expected when brought to market and bought by contemptuous middlemen.

The Revolt of Guadalajara, Chapter 1 part 1 continued

But sometimes the desire for something else—for someone from the outside, whoever that might be, whoever can upset the lifeless balance of being—is so strong, that they surround him or comes out of the town to greet him, and he feels the feeling of welcome that is so appealing to a drifter or a traveler-over-great-distances. Then he is lost.

Sometimes in just these kinds of towns there abides a strong belief, like the last remaining vine on a ruin, that something is finally going to happen, that the sun is going to shine differently, that someone is going to come who will upend life in such a way that people will dance in the same otherwise quiet and vacuous streets. And every stranger who arrives in an uncommon manner is believed to be the one who will bring the turnaround. The wanderer thus endangered, crushed under the centuries-long hope of an entire people, can still sometimes save himself by means of a wild flight, across the plain, over hill and dale, until a fold of the earth shields him from the town and there are no villages left to obstruct and stare at him; then he collapses, leaning against a stone or a tree trunk, and falls into an exhausted sleep.

And the next morning, when the sun rises over an expansive plain and shimmers early in a salt flat or a shallow sea or on white spotted cattle, and he wakes up, stiff from sleep but still ready to keep walking, his first thought is of the oppressive dream of a town that was built of stone but wasn’t really there. Because space and the man that freely passes through it are the only truth, that is what life is, and everything frozen in place and gradually returning to dust is dead from the get-go.

But the drifter who is too weak for his calling, who nurtures a secret longing in a corner of his soul for a resting place, a community where even he can find a place, often is ambushed by a dead lonely town, in the middle of an abandoned plain or a harborless coast. He betrays his calling and it wreaks its revenge. The residents of the lifeless place think that he comes to bring life and when they realize that it’s rest that he wants, they drive him away or kill him.

The Revolt of Guadalajara, Chapter 1 part 1

Sometimes, on the shores of a shipless sea, at the foot of an uninhabited and bald-scraped mountain range or in the middle of a parched and arid plain inspiring little hope of a lone house, much less a cluster of them, there lies a town. Its raison d’etre—a rich mine, a good harbor—has long since been abandoned and still the town remains, the inhabitants breeding forth though starved of new blood or money, their line like that of the surrounding tribes growing meager and weak. The outside world does not begrudge this town her pinched existence and leaves her be; she is harmless.

Only for the lonely traveler bound for better places does she present any real danger. Tired from long journeys, seeing that town lying there now in the middle of nowhere, he wants to rest. The town juts out on the coast, on the foot of the mountain or in the middle of the plain like a reef that is hard to get around. If he risks getting too close to her, all the hope, all the longing for a new life and a better fate that exists in the people of the town and the plains as surely as it does in all mortals, is poured out upon him. He doesn’t notice it, he takes his feeling to be a heavy exhaustion after his long trek, such that he decides to stay on the plain or in the town for a few days to catch his breath. But a terror does seize him when he sees the hungry, hankering faces of the locals lifted up towards him, when he wanders through the alleys and streets and hesitates on a sunless square about where to go, when he reads a persistent inbreeding on the pallid faces and slack suffering of the inhabitants. And despite his exhaustion he runs faster and faster and, if he is lucky and his sense of direction doesn’t leave him in the lurch, he gets out of there, and stands in an hour on the other side facing the same plain, prostrate now and endless before him, wholly manageable, beckoning him to cross. And if, clammy with sweat, he should have the good fortune of a stream to bathe away his weariness and his brush with the town, then he’ll be saved.

Introducing Jan Jacob Slauerhoff

J.J. Slauerhoff was a ship's doctor-writer-translator (from Spanish, Portuguese, and French to Dutch) widely regarded as one of the greatest Dutch poets of the 20th century interbellum.

When I first moved to the Netherlands, I imagined that someday I would translate Dutch poetry into English. I'd had a course in 20th century poets during an undergraduate semester at Leiden University, but that was before I'd read much of anything beyond the Romantics in my own tradition, and I didn't realize that relative to American poets after Whitman, the Dutch had an incredibly stubborn penchant for formalism--let alone that this would piss me off. (I don't know about you, but not much of the world I live in lends itself to orderly sequences of weighty conclusions hammered home by rhyme.) So anyhow, that didn't work out.

Then just as I was leaving for Mexico, my friend J gave me a novella by Slauerhoff called De opstand van Guadalajara (The Revolt of Guadalajara). It is a misanthropic little melodrama, written in the last year of Slauerhoff's sickly, misanthropic little life, and I loved it. I've been talking about translating it for years, ever since I discovered that it's come out in translation in Germany, Indonesia, and Italy--as recently as 1999 in the latter--but never in the U.S. I've even done rough cuts of the first and last of ten chapters, and made my friends read them and tell me they'd like to read the rest.

. . . Fast forward to this morning, when I got it in my head yet again to work on it serially in this blog, where I hope to be buoyed along by the inevitable crush of readers clamoring for its completion. A girl's gotta dream. Anyhow, it had been quite awhile since I'd had this particular bug up my ass, so it took some time to even find the book. Then, scanning the back cover, something registered for the first time: Slauerhoff died in 1936 at just 38 years old.

It just so happens that I am turning 39 next month, and it bears stating outright that I identified from the get-go with Slauerhoff as a kindred vagabond/poet/translator crazy in love with the sound of Spanish but more properly at home among the Dutch. So this discovery was kind of fraught, an echo of a moment 11 years before when, walking past a record store in Leiden, I felt compelled--really, physically compelled--to go in there and buy a German edition of Janice Joplin's greatest hits. From the liner notes I learned that Janice died at 27, the age that I was just about to stop being, and though I've never been all that rock & roll and her music is a bit out of character for me, it seemed important that I do something in honor of our unlikely connection that day. Like dedicate this translation of Slauerhoff to her. So here it goes:

The Revolt of Guadalajara

by J. Slauerhoff
translated by Jenny Gage

for Janice.