The Woman from Uruguay Read online

  It’s been a year now, I can get out of my obsession with that day now, and this week I’ll finish paying you back the money you loaned me. Thank you for the comfortable installments you let me pay it in. I still owe my brother. Working at the radio isn’t really my thing, that’s true. I get tired of the witty assholes, those predictable jokes, the amorphous interruptions, and sometimes I deeply desire the apocalypse, a meteorite that wipes us out like it did the dinosaurs. But, besides that, I generally work in peace despite the reprehensible schedule that has me start at six in the morning. Above all, what makes me happy, Cata, is that we have simplified. Not having a car was hard at first, but it’s a relief to have gotten free of that huge lump that heated up in the sun, sucked down hectoliters of gas, demanded constant fixing, imported parts, washes, parking, kept me in traffic for hours on end on highways with their asphalt burning. No more car. Putting Maiko in public school was a good move, too. He’s adapted well. Sometimes when I go to pick him up, I notice how we progressive parents see each other without saying anything, just glance at each other out of the corner of our eyes, we hear each other’s accents of camouflaged snobs. Another thing Maiko rapidly adapted to was spending half the week with me and half with you. Maybe he over-adapts, but the other day a dumbass neighbor asked him, “Did you come to visit your papa?” and he said to her, “I didn’t come to visit him, I live with him, too.” A magnificent young man. The days I don’t see him, I miss him, and I write quite a bit. The book of columns came out in Bogotá. If you want I’ll give you a copy, but you already read almost all of them when they were coming out as articles. It’s dedicated to you. The Brazilian novel stayed in some neural nebula. But I’m working on a book of poems, and, very slowly, another novel, but no Amazonian adventures, no narcos or gunfights or knives, just a few kicks on the other side of the river. Peripeteia in neighboring states. I’m not going to tell you much because otherwise it’ll lose momentum. Once a month I send Enzo a column for his magazine. The guys in Spain from Astillero keep asking for their book. Easy does it.

  This is it. My chronicle of that Tuesday is coming to an end. I walked the last block between grunts and moans. What was left of me arrived at the door to the building. The neighbor from the tenth floor was just leaving, the woman who used to go downstairs with her poodle to the consortium meetings. I went in and took the elevator up. In the mirror I was horrifying. That wasn’t the same face that had taken the elevator down that morning. Deadly pallor, sunken eyes, disheveled hair, rumpled clothing, out of alignment, asymmetrical, hunched over, filthy, beaten, guilty, and covered in kilometers. And with the instrument for my son in my hand. It had been seventeen hours. The things I had experienced that morning—happiness on the bus, for example—seemed like they had happened in the distant past. It had been a long day. What had yours been like, from the morning when we said goodbye? And Guerra’s? And her boyfriend, César’s? And Mr. Cuco’s? May death be to know all. For now, I can only imagine. If I could narrate the exact day of that dog with all its details, smells, sounds, intuitions, comings and goings, then I would be a great novelist. But that much imagination I do not possess. I write about what happens to me. And what happened was that the elevator reached our floor. I opened the doors, closed them, and rang the bell. In the pause before I heard your voice, I experienced the certainty that I loved you as I continue to love you and as I will always love you, no matter what. It was very late, and from the other side of the door I heard you ask: “Who is it?” I answered: “It’s me.”

  A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR AND TRANSLATOR

  Pedro Mairal is a professor of English literature in Buenos Aires. In 1998 he was awarded the Premio Clarín de Novela and in 2007 he was included in the Hay Festival’s Bogotá39 list, which named the thirty-nine best Latin American authors under thirty-nine. Among his novels are A Night with Sabrina Love, which was made into a film and widely translated, and The Woman from Uruguay, which was a bestseller in Latin America and Spain and has been published in twelve countries.

  Jennifer Croft was awarded the Man Booker International Prize in 2018 and was a National Book Award Finalist for her translation of Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights. She is the recipient of Fulbright, PEN, MacDowell, and National Endowment for the Arts grants and fellowships, as well as a Tin House Workshop Scholarship for her memoir Homesick. She has published her own work and numerous translations in the New York Times, VICE, n+1, the New Republic, the Guardian, the Chicago Tribune, and elsewhere.

  BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING

  Bloomsbury Publishing Inc.

  1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA

  BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING, and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  This electronic edition first published in the United States 2021

  Copyright © Pedro Mairal, 2018

  Translation Copyright © Jennifer Croft, 2021

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.

  ISBN: HB: 978-1-63557-733-4; EBOOK: 978-1-63557-734-1

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE

  2020946474

  To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

  Bloomsbury books may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at [email protected]