signs-preceding-9.html

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‌The Obsidian Place with No Windows or Holes for the Smoke

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She couldn’t stop, she had to keep walking even if she didn’t know how she was going to get back. It was the rhythm, it was her burden-free body, it was the soft sound of her own panting that pushed her on. She quickened her step; with the ashen sun head-on she walked down gray streets and past houses that were all the same, like little boxes lined up in a storefront window.

She came to a park all atwitter with birds about to go to sleep. She walked straight through the middle of it, not around it on the sidewalk, and with each step her feet—pad, pad, pad—left an imprint on the earth. The evening clouded over until you couldn’t see more than one step ahead, and yet Makina didn’t stop: she walked quickly—pad, pad, pad—guiding herself by the trilling in the trees. Suddenly she heard Watch how you go, darlin.

She turned to see who had spoken, because they’d said it in latin tongue, and saw that there, sitting on a bench looking exactly like himself and also quite different—like varnished over, like meaner, or with a bigger nose—was Chucho, grinning at her. First she saw the ember, then the man who made it glow. Makina felt herself smile though she didn’t feel the emotion behind the smile because she’d somehow been emptied of feelings by now.

What are you doing here? she asked.

Doing my thing, looking out for you.

Don’t you work for Aitch? Mr. Q is the one who was supposed to help me on this side.

I work for whoever hires me. Never stopped watching you, I know where you been and how tough things got.

Things are tough all over, but here I’m all mixed up, I just don’t understand this place.

Don’t let it get you down. They don’t understand it either, they live in fear of the lights going out, as if every day wasn’t already made of lightning and blackouts. They need us. They want to live forever but still can’t see that for that to work they need to change color and number. But it’s already happening.

Chucho took a drag on his cigarette so deep he almost consumed it all. Then he said And now you’re here, follow me. He stood and Makina walked beside him. They left the park, entered a little maze of streets that looked like they belonged to some other city and stopped before a low, narrow door behind which nothing could be seen.

Go on in, Chucho said, pointing.

Here? What is this place?

Here’s where they’ll give you a hand.

Makina crouched down to fit through the door, and on taking the first step felt a cold wind coming from inside but didn’t get cold herself; she saw the top of a spiral staircase. She began to descend, turned to see if Chucho was following but he had stayed at the door, blew her a kiss, moved out of the frame and Makina caught a glimpse of the last rays of sun. Then she went on down. After four spiral turns she came to another door, which was answered by a handsome old woman with very long white fingernails and a powdered face, wearing a butterfly pin that held back the folds of her dress. Over the door was a sign that said Verse. She tried to remember how to say verse in any of her tongues but couldn’t. This was the only word that came to her lips. Verse. The woman drew two cigarettes from a black case, lit them both and held one out. Makina took it and stepped through.

The place was like a sleepwalker’s bedroom: specific yet inexact, somehow unreal and yet vivid; there were lots of people, very calm, all smoking, and though she saw no ventilation shafts nor felt any currents the air didn’t smell. Like a song from long ago, a sudden apprehension made her think something terrible was going to occur any second. Something’s about to happen, something’s about to happen. She tensed and felt she loved her skin, but the tension soon gave way, lulled by the only clear and distinguishable sound in the place. She hadn’t noticed it until now: there was no music, no conversation, just the sound of running water, not like through the plumbing but the energetic coursing of subterranean rivers that reminded her that it had been a while since she’d washed, and yet she wasn’t dirty, didn’t smell bad—didn’t smell at all.

What’s going to happen, she wondered.

Then, making his way toward her from among the crowd, she saw a tall, thin man draped in a baggy leather jacket. He had protruding teeth that yellowed his enormous smile. He stopped in front of her.

Here. He held out a file. All taken care of.

Makina took the file and looked at its contents. There she was, with another name, another birthplace. Her photo, new numbers, new trade, new home. I’ve been skinned, she whispered.

When she looked up the man was no longer there and she tipped briefly into panic, she felt for a second—or for many seconds; she couldn’t tell because she didn’t have a watch, nobody had a watch—that the turmoil of so many new things crowding in on the old ones was more than she could take; but a second—or many—later she stopped feeling the weight of uncertainty and guilt; she thought back to her people as though recalling the contours of a lovely landscape that was now fading away: the Village, the Little Town, the Big Chilango, all those colors, and she saw that what was happening was not a cataclysm; she understood with all of her body and all of her memory, she truly understood, and when everything in the world fell silent finally said to herself I’m ready.

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‌Translator’s Note

Th‌ere could hardly be a more appropriate time for the English publication of Yuri Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World. For, in its nine short chapters, this remarkable novel explores not only the timeless themes of epic journey, death, and the underworld, but also many of the pressing issues of our times: migration, immigration (and two of its stomach-churning corollaries, so-called nativism and profiling), transnationalism, transculturalism, and language hybridity—not to mention, of course, the end of the world.

How, then, to recreate all of this in English? Undertaking a translation requires first determining what makes the text in question so striking, and, in the case of Signs, that turns out to be quite a long list. In the same way that the novel delves into a large number of themes within a very short space, Yuri Herrera’s prose, too, exhibits a multitude of distinct characteristics, displaying great variations in what is always creative and often non-standard language: its rhythm and orality; a style that is elegantly spare; striking metaphors, which are often unusual but rarely jarring; a mix of registers both low and high—slang and colloquial but also lyrical and eloquent, some rural and others urban and both often very Mexican (or very much of its border); and neologism, to name just some. There is also the overall tone, which is intimate and often infused with understated affection and tenderness. And there is the fact that all of this manages to sound entirely natural. Yuri Herrera’s use of language is nothing short of stunning, and translating it is both fulfilling and daunting; what makes his writing so unique is what makes it so challenging to translate.

To prepare for the project, as many translators do, I first read widely. I read for theme; I read for tone; I read for style. I read texts that took place on borders. I read about Aztec mythology and Alice in Wonderland and Dante’s circles of hell. I tried to read writers who might have styles, or tones, or non-standard usage that I would find in some way comparable or analogous. The most helpful was Cormac McCarthy (in particular The Road, another tale—coincidentally, or not?—that can be read on different levels, one of which is “the end of the world”). I made word lists and devised ways to be non-standard in English (unusual collocations, creative compound nouns, nominalization of verbs and verbalization of nouns). I looked for ways to work in alliteration to lend the English rhythm, to lend it sonority. And even if much of this was culled during successive revisions and edits, these strategies informed the entire undertaking of the project, leaving their mark.

In addition, I tried to create an English that was geographically non-explicit, although, like me, the translation speaks mostly American English. To explain what I mean by that, let me offer a couple of examples. The novel’s dialogues are often peppered with language—colloquialisms, slang, expressions, culturally-embedded references—that could only take place in Mexico (or on the Mexico–USA border). Translating only what readers might see as the meaning of these conversations and references might arguably produce a comprehensible and accurate text, though it would lose its regional flavor and intimacy (think of the difference between “a bonnie lass” and “a pretty girl,” for instance). Nevertheless, attempting to find an English dialect that would serve as a linguistic “parallel” is problematic. Should Mexican gangsters speak like mobsters in The Godfather? If not, is there another group they should speak like? My answer is “no.” Instead, I’ve endeavored to do two things. First, I have sometimes “marked” the language as non-standard in ways that are not geographically recognizable. In dialogues, this meant emphasizing the oral nature of the language (using colloquialisms such as “yond” for “over there,” abbreviating “about” to “bout,” for example). Second, I have occasionally left specific words in Spanish, deliberately choosing not to translate. When a character calls his mother jefecita, for example (literally, “little boss”—a not terribly uncommon term of endearment), she remains jefecita in the translation. My intention here is to leave a linguistic reminder to the reader that this is, in fact, a translated text, and to avoid renderings (“momma,” “moms,” etc.) that might be genuinely intimate, but cringe-makingly American for language meant to come out of a rural Mexican teenager’s mouth.

Unsurprisingly, I also spent a tremendous amount of time considering possibilities for the novel’s most talked-about neologism: jarchar. Yuri himself has discussed this verb in multiple places. Within Signs, it means, essentially, “to leave.” The word is derived from jarchas (from the Arabic kharja, meaning exit), which were short Mozarabic verses or couplets tacked on to the end of longer Arabic or Hebrew poems written in Al-Andalus, the region we now call Spain. Written in the vernacular, these lyric compositions served as a sort of bridge between cultures and languages, Mozarabic being a kind of hybrid that was, of course, not yet Spanish. And on one level Signs is just that: a book about bridging cultures and languages. Jarchar, too, is a noun-turned-verb. I wrangled with myself—and spoke somewhat obsessively with others—over how best to render this term, debating multiple options before finally deciding on “to verse” (the two runners-up were “to port” and “to twain”). Used in context it is easily understood, and has the added benefits of also being a noun-turned-verb, a term clearly referring to poetry, and part of several verbs involving motion and communication (traverse, reverse, converse) as well as the “end” of the uni-verse. Makina, the protagonist, is the character who most often “verses,” as well as the woman who serves as a bridge between cultures, languages and worlds. Would readers realize any of this had it not just been explained? I doubt it. But that’s ok; the same is true of the Spanish. Opening with a sinkhole large enough to kill people and closing with another subterranean sequence, the book takes us full circle in a variety of ways.

This translation has benefited from the direct and indirect input of many people whom I’d like to thank. It was Katherine Silver who initially sent the opportunity to translate Yuri my way. I also gained from the encouragement, suggestions, edits, discussions, pep talks, emails, readings, and other forms of support of friends, mentors, and editors including Peter Bush, Jean Dangler, Lorna Scott Fox, Daniel Hahn, Henry Reese, Samantha Schnee, and Lawrence Venuti. I would like especially to thank Drew Whitelegg for multiple re-readings, endless discussions and encouragement. And my absolute deepest thanks go to Yuri himself, for answering hundreds of emails (often many per day, sometimes with a dozen questions each) as well as generously discussing in person some of the novel’s many nuances, providing constant encouragement and always being open to exploring new avenues of interpretation.

Lisa Dillman
Decatur, Georgia, USA
February 2014

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