El árbol | the tree by Hawaiʻi Review

El Árbol The Tree

by Mónica Lavín Translated by Patricia Dubrava Illustrations by María Perujo

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF | LynleyShimat Lys CO-EDITOR | Sáshily Kling CO-EDITOR | Tina Togafau CO-EDITOR | Marley Aiu CO-EDITOR | Jimi Coloma CHAPBOOK EDITOR | LynleyShimat Lys ADMINISTRATIVE & TECHNICAL SUPPORT University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Student Media Board Mahalo nui loa to Sandy Matsui for guidance! Hawaiʻi Review logo by Bryce Watanabe Hawaiʻi Review is a publication of the Student Media Board of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. A bold, student-run journal, H\R reflects the views of its editors and contributors, who are solely responsible for its content. Hawaiʻi Review is a member of the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines and is indexed by the Humanities International Index, the Index of American Periodical Verse, Writer’s Market, and Poet’s Market. CONTACT: hawaiireview@gmail.com SUBMIT: hawaiireview.org Copyright 2018 by Board of Publications University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. ISSN: 0093-9625

As it happens, sleep is interrupted in various ways. Sometimes by dreams, sometimes by noises that penetrate consciousness enough to open our eyelids. Lola woke because she thought she heard something unusual. Finding herself sitting up in bed, she stayed still, as if the rustle of her own movements would overshadow the sound that had startled her awake. She stared attentively into the darkness of the room, but the noise didn’t repeat. Looking at her husband’s head on the pillow, she envied his soft, deep-sleep breathing. Lola did not want to share this oddity with him. It was impossible to go back to sleep without seeking some explanation, so she got up. Groping in the darkness until she felt the plush texture of her robe, she put it on and went quietly to the children’s room. She only hovered at the doorway. It had happened before, especially when they had a fever or the flu, that a sudden fear woke her and she went to check on them, to peer into their little faces and cup her hand over their noses to feel the exhalation of their breath. They were alive. Now she went down the hall barefoot and scanned the living and dining rooms. The bare windows allowed the light of night to enter unobstructed; even so she flipped the switch to verify that things were in their place and there were no unexpected shadows. She’d always been afraid to turn on or shut off lights, because then 7

the intruder—if there were one—would know that someone had become aware of him. But this time she looked calmly at the large armchair, the smaller one, the bookshelf in the back, the table and chairs, the china cabinet. All quiet. Her breathing began to slow down. And no further sound confirmed that what she’d heard while she slept had even happened. Could a connection in the brain make noise, a snap of chemical transmitters be heard? What happened with those surprised by a blood clot that abruptly altered their faculties? Did they hear something moments before the fatal event? Confirming that the rooms were in order gave her pleasure. It was like spying unannounced on her own home to prove she was capable of maintaining a certain state of things. For example, that they’d been able to pay the rent for a comfortable place, especially with the quantity of windows that opened on others’ gardens, giving the illusion of possessing them; that they’d furnished and decorated it and, moreover, kept it clean and neat. The kitchen faced the street. She went into it thinking the casserole could have slipped off the drain basket at the sink. Sometimes she piled dishes without putting them away. Especially at night, when she wanted to watch a movie with her husband, when the children had already been lulled to sleep with a story and she had covered them and shut 8

off the light that she kept lit until then, because the oldest asked for it. The kitchen was in order and all was so quiet that it seemed as if she were alone in the house; only the profusion of glasses in the drain basket gave evidence that she lived with her family. And strangely, that sudden, disturbed waking, the resultant inspection of the rooms in silence, allowed that slice of the night to belong to her. One inhabited nights by offering sleep as a gift to darkness. But this night was hers, like when she was a teenager and the excitement of the day just concluded made her find her notebook in the chest of drawers and review the look of the boy she liked and what he had said (which she already couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember and even less write with exactness). She approximated and exaggerated the scene, but it was satisfying to replay it and feel again the hand that took hers in the movie theatre. Sleep was a hindrance that made her forget the warm and naughty sensation of complicity. She also remembered a time when she was leaving home for several months and spent the night before departure in the living room, thinking about her home, her parents, her siblings, her city. She was saying goodbye. Or how when suddenly in the night she brushed against her husbandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s body and his smoothness and smell, his solidity, woke her desire to violate that, to demand an answer to her midnight appetite. Exceptions. 9

This night seemed to have a border, a dark edge separating it from the light that announced night’s passing each morning. She heard a car squealing to a stop. The sound returned her to her task. It was difficult to see through the kitchen window because the sink was in the way. She went to the bathroom to look out to the street, shut off the light she’d turned on in order to see better what had happened outside. The night seemed unusually dark, except for the red taillights of the car that blinked in front of her house like an animal in danger. She went downstairs and opened the door to the wrought iron enclosed carport. She saw the car reverse, turn to go back the way it came and disappear. The streetlight was out. Again alone with the night, she now knew there was a connection between the braking car and the noise that had awakened her. Because the street seemed impenetrable, she looked then toward the carport and discovered a dark mass behind her car, as if the night had stained it with ink. She eased her way around the car, couldn’t see the cement floor, but discerned an additional blackness, an uncomfortable presence. Once close enough, she was astonished to see the leafy branch of a tree thrust through the bars of the grille and lying inside the carport. She touched a branch, ran her gaze over that giant jumble of branches straining between the bars, as if the tree were 10

begging. Walking with care toward the latticed wall, avoiding branches, she felt the cold of the cement through the soles of her feet. Finally she understood. The main trunk of the tree blocked the street. It had fallen from the front sidewalk and sliced through the bars to its full length, landing nearly across the carport. A bit taller and it would have crashed into the house’s windows. Lola made out the wires on the sidewalk behind the carport; the tree had taken out the streetlight and twisted the pole to the right. Then she felt afraid of that live electricity running near her feet, from which there could be a spark to catch the tree on fire. Like many in the city, it was an ash and her street was full of trees, being an old neighborhood, but nobody thought that one of them would collapse in the middle of the night— fortunately, because it could have crushed cars, people, her and her children leaving the house. She retreated from the metal bars and took shelter under the eaves of the house, close to the top of the highest branches that now lay at her feet. She should go wake her husband, so he could see what had happened, a tree spread across the carport, a tree lying across the street. She also ought to call the police or fire department—who do you call in such a case? Not only were the wires a danger, but a car could collide with that unexpected trunk on the darkened street. But she didn’t do any of it, sat on the curb that bordered 11

the garage and stayed silent. The night and that fallen tree still belonged to her. The tree was at her feet; she contemplated its destiny with sadness. She’d been invited to the mourning. And she appreciated that there weren’t condolences or volunteers who wanted to cut it into pieces, divert the traffic, extract each of the branches embedded in the metal. At least not yet. Like when Olga Knipper, Chekhov’s wife, wanted to spent the night with her dead husband in Badenweiler before telling anyone else. Lola read that in a magazine in her gynecologist’s waiting room. It was a story by a certain Raymond Carver. Although it treated Chekhov’s death, it was about the suffering of the actress he’d married four years before and about the waiter who that night had brought them three glasses of champagne. It was about the unexpected and grief. Like Olga Knipper, she wanted to spend time alone with the fallen tree that wasn’t even hers, or perhaps was hers because she saw it from the kitchen window daily although she ignored it; it was just there, stable and firm. Like the house where she lived as a girl or her father’s office where she went to visit him so often; like her parents’ marriage, fixed as a scene in a film that one day rips. She thought of the days when she opened the door to enter the house after school and the world was that house with its garden, immovable, rooted like a mountain. And the set table awaited them 12

to hear the stories of their mornings between the clatter of cutlery and tortilla-wrapped meatballs. It was absurd to be thinking of meatballs and the cook who had fallen ill when she stopped working for them. That story of the solitary grieving of Knipper with the dead writer in the room, close and still warm, was different from Carver’s other stories, as she discovered when she found his books. Although not completely, because the writer knew how to put the accent on silence. And she enjoyed reading him for that. It seemed as if nothing happened between the Morgan and Myers and Webster and Stone, and what happened was exposure, fragility, solitude. This fallen tree had arrived to upset the course of the night, to caress her legs with the tender leaves of its crown. She thought of her sleeping children and how, when she read that story about the death of Chekhov they did not exist nor were even a possibility. She had just met the one who would be their father and still didn’t have to organize a domestic world. She ran her eyes over the dark branches and made out a shape, thought with horror of a rat. But rats don’t climb into trees; besides it was a still shape. A dead bird? Not long ago she had seen one under the terrace window; it seemed to have been dashed against the glass, killed by the illusion of transparency. It wasn’t just any death. She picked it up in a newspaper because she didn’t want to feel its 13

temperature, to know if it was recent or cold from the hours since it had died. She leaned over the branch and made out the nest. If she had been someone who worried about animals and didn’t go around thinking to possess the night for a time, she might have taken the nest of twigs and carried it to the terrace so the little eggs it surely held would survive if the mother found them before the squirrels did. Staring fixedly, she tried to decipher the contents of the nest. She felt the wind of dawn rising and the first clarity start to lift the curtain of night. It was time to go back inside. She heard a patrol car; someone had done the right thing and called. Looking for the last time at the bulk of the uprooted tree, she imagined the increased light its absence would create in the kitchen window. That would be all that remained of that ash: a gap as memory of its shade. She closed the door behind her, and before getting back in bed next to her husband’s placid sleep, went into the children’s room and cupped her palm to feel the vapor of their breath. Calmed, she went to her bedroom. Tomorrow they would find out what happened. She would pretend surprise. She wouldn’t tell them that she was there, seated in the silence of the night, attending the wake. She would not mention that the night had been hers.

El árbol Ocurre que el sueño se interrumpe por diferentes razones. Algunas provienen del pensamiento, otras de los ruidos que traspasan nuestros párpados. Ambas son inciertas y difusas. Lola se despertó porque creyó advertir un ruido inesperado. Se sentó en la cama y se quedó muda, como si el sonido de sus propios movimientos fuese a opacar aquella señal que la sobresaltó. Permaneció con la mirada atenta en la oscuridad de la habitación, pero el ruido no se repitió. Miró a su marido sobre la almohada, le envidió la respiración dulce del sueño profundo. No quiso compartirle esa extrañeza. Se puso de pie porque resultaba imposible vencerse sobre el colchón sin explicación alguna. Tanteó en la oscuridad hasta reconocer la textura felpuda de su bata. Se la ató al cuerpo y siguió despacio al cuarto de los niños. Asomó tan sólo por el quicio de la puerta. Ya le había sucedido que algún temor inesperado, sobre todo cuando tenían fiebre o estaban mal del estómago, la llevaba a espiarlos de noche, a acercarse a sus pequeños rostros y colocar su mano sobre la nariz para sentir el alivio de su respiración. Estaban vivos. Siguió por el pasillo descalza y oteó la sala y el comedor a la derecha. La ausencia de cortinas permitía que la luz de la noche entrara rotunda; aun así dio al apagador 17

para verificar que las cosas estuvieran en su lugar y que no hubiera sombras inesperadas. Siempre que tenía miedo prendía y apagaba la luz para que el intruso —si acaso lo hubiera— supiera que alguien había advertido sus intenciones. Pero ahora miraba sin miedo el sillón largo, el más corto, los libros al fondo, la mesa rodeada de sillas a la entrada, el trastero. Todo quieto. Su propia respiración comenzaba a aquietarse. Y ningún ruido confirmaba que lo que hubiera escuchado antes mientras dormía fuera cierto. ¿Sería posible que una conexión del cerebro hiciera ruido, que un chasquido de los transmisores químicos se pudiera escuchar? ¿Qué pasaba con quienes eran sorprendidos por un tapón de sangre que cambiaba bruscamente sus facultades? ¿Escuchaban algo momentos antes de la fatalidad? Confirmar que la sala estaba en orden le dio gusto. Era como espiar su casa a deshoras para comprobar que era capaz de mantener cierto estado de las cosas, que habían podido pagar la renta de un lugar grato (sobre todo por la cantidad de ventanas que se abrían a los jardines de las otras casas dándoles la ilusión de poseerlos); amueblarlo y vestirlo de los objetos de uno y otro, y encima que estuviera limpio y recogido. Entró a la cocina que daba a la calle pensando que una cacerola podía haber resbalado del escurridor al fregadero; a veces las apilaba sin 18

guardarlas. Sobre todo por las noches, cuando quería ver una película en la televisión con su marido, cuando los niños ya habían sido arrullados con un cuento y los había arropado y apagado la luz que mantenía encendida, porque así lo pedía el mayor. La cocina estaba en orden y todo tan quieto que parecía que ella habitara sola esa casa; nada más la abundancia de vasos escurriendo permitía saber que ella vivía acompañada por su familia. Y extrañamente ese despertar súbito e inquieto, conforme recorría la casa en el silencio, permitía que esa hora de la casa, esa tajada de la noche, le perteneciera. Uno habitaba las noches brindando el sueño como ofrenda a la oscuridad. Pero esta noche era suya, como cuando de adolescente la excitación del día transcurrido la hacía buscar su libreta en el buró y repasar la mirada del chico que le gustaba, y lo que le había dicho (que ya no lo podía recordar y menos escribir con exactitud). Describía la escena y la exageraba, pero le satisfacía transitar por ella de nuevo y sentir la mano que atrapaba la suya en el cine. El sueño era un estorbo porque hacía olvidar la sensación cálida y traviesa de la complicidad. También recordó cuando se fue por varios meses de su casa y pasó la noche anterior a la partida en la sala, pensando en su casa, en sus padres, en sus hermanos, en la ciudad. Se despedía. O como cuando de pronto en la noche se topaba con el cuerpo de su marido y su tersura 19

y su olor, y su consistencia despertaba su deseo de violentarlo, de exigir la respuesta a su apetito de medianoche. Excepciones. La noche de hoy parecía tener un borde, una frontera distinta a la de la luz del sol que anunciaba su en cada mañana. Escuchó un auto frenar con fuerza. Y el sonido la devolvió a su tarea. Era difícil mirar por la cocina porque el fregadero estorbaba. Se dirigió al baño para ver hacia la calle. Apagó la luz que había encendido para poder distinguir mejor lo que sucedía afuera. La noche le pareció inusualmente oscura, salvo por las luces rojas del auto que parpadeaban frente a su casa como animal en peligro. Echó a andar escaleras abajo y abrió la puerta que daba al garaje enrejado. Distinguió al auto que se echaba en reversa, maniobraba para tomar calle arriba y se alejaba. No había luz en el poste. Volvía a estar con la noche y ahora sabía que había una conexión entre el frenar del auto y el ruido que la había despertado. Miró entonces hacia el garaje porque la calle le parecía impenetrable, y descubrió al lado del auto allí estacionado una masa oscura. Como si se hubiera manchado de tinta la noche. Caminó esquivando su coche en el garaje. No distinguía el cemento del piso, sólo una negrura adicional, una presencia incómoda. Ya de cerca se asombró al ver la fronda de un árbol incrustada entre los barrotes de la reja y acostada en la mitad del garaje. Extendió la mano y tocó 20

una rama. Recorrió a aquel gigante desvencijado con la vista, las ramas colándose entre los barrotes, como si el árbol fuese un hombre suplicante. Sintió el frío del cemento en sus plantas mientras caminaba con cuidado hacia la reja, evadiendo ramas. Por en lo entendió. El fuste del árbol atravesaba la avenida. Había caído desde la acera de enfrente y se había introducido entre los barrotes de la reja para extender su largura, que topaba justa con el fondo del garaje. Si no, se hubiera incrustado en las ventanas de la casa. Lola distinguió los cables en la acera tras la reja; el árbol había vencido el alumbrado y enchuecado el poste de la derecha. Entonces sintió temor de esa electricidad viva corriendo muy cerca de sus pies, de que hubiera una chispa y el fresno se incendiara. Recordó que era un fresno como había muchos en la ciudad y que la calle donde vivía era muy arbolada por ser un barrio antiguo, y nadie pensaba que en medio de la noche (afortunadamente, porque habría podido aplastar autos, gente, a ella misma y a sus hijas saliendo de casa) se desplomara uno de ellos. Se retiró de la reja y se colocó bajo el alero de la casa, muy cerca del final de las ramas más altas que ahora yacían a sus pies. Debía entrar y despertar a su marido, que viera lo que había ocurrido, un árbol tendido en el garaje, un árbol atravesando la calle. También debía llamar a la policía, o a los bomberos, ¿a quién se llamaba 21

en ese caso? No sólo los cables eran un peligro sino que cualquier coche en la noche podía estrellarse contra ese tronco inesperado. Pero no lo hizo, se sentó en la banqueta que bordeaba el garaje y se quedó en silencio. La noche todavía le pertenecía y ese árbol vencido también. Lo tenía a sus pies; contempló con tristeza su destino. Había sido invitada al duelo. Y apreció que no hubiera pésames ni voluntades que quisieran cortarlo en pedazos, menearlo con una grúa, desviar el tráfico, extraer cada una de las ramas embutidas en el metal. Por lo menos todavía no. Como cuando Olga Knipper, la mujer de Chéjov, quiso pasar la noche con su marido muerto en Badenweiler antes de avisar a los otros. Leyó aquel pasaje en una revista en el consultorio del ginecólogo. Era un cuento de un tal Raymond Carver. Aunque trataba de la muerte de Chéjov, era sobre el duelo de la actriz con quien se casó cuatro años antes y sobre el camarero que en la noche les llevó las tres copas de champaña. Era sobre lo inesperado y el duelo. Y aquí estaba ella como Olga Knipper con deseos de pasar un tiempo a solas con el árbol caído, que no era suyo ni nada, o que tal vez era suyo porque lo veía desde la ventana de la cocina todos los días aunque lo ignorara; era como esas cosas que están allí gratuitas, estables y firmes. Como la casa donde vivió de niña o la oficina de su padre a donde iba a visitarlo tan a menudo, como el 22

matrimonio de sus padres, todo fijo como una escenografía que un día se rasga. Pensó en los días en que se abría la puerta para entrar a casa después de la escuela y el mundo era esa casa con jardín, inamovible, sólida como una montaña. Y la mesa puesta los esperaba a todos para escuchar el relato de sus mañanas entre el movimiento de cubiertos y las tortillas que envolvían las albóndigas. Le pareció absurdo estar pensando en albóndigas y en la cocinera que se había enfermado cuando dejó de trabajar con ellos. Aunque aquel cuento del duelo solitario de la Knipper con el escritor muerto en la habitación, cercano y todavía tibio, era distinto a los otros de Carver, como lo comprobó cuando buscó sus libros. Aunque no del todo porque el escritor sabía poner el acento en el silencio. Y ella disfrutaba leerlo por eso. Parecía que no pasaba nada entre los Morgan y Myers y Webster y Stone, y lo que pasaba era el descobijo, la fragilidad, la soledad. Este árbol caído venía a trastornarle el curso a la noche para acariciarle las piernas con las hojas tiernas de la fronda alta. Y pensó en los niños que dormían y que cuando leía aquel cuento sobre la muerte de Chéjov aún no eran un hecho o una posibilidad. Apenas había conocido a quien sería su padre y todavía no tenía que ordenar un mundo doméstico. Dejó los ojos entre el ramaje oscuro y descubrió un bulto; pensó con horror en una 23

rata. Pero las ratas no andan en los árboles; además era un bulto quieto. ¿Un pájaro muerto? Se había topado hacía poco con el cuerpo de uno bajo la ventana de la terraza; parecía haberse estrellado contra el vidrio y muerto en el engaño de esa transparencia. No era cualquier muerte. Lo recogió con un periódico porque no quería sentir su temperatura, ni saber si era una muerte reciente o estaba helado por las horas transcurridas. Se inclinó hacia la rama y distinguió el nido. De haber sido alguien que se preocupara por los animales y que no anduviese pensando en poseer la noche por un rato, hubiera tomado el nido de varas y lo hubiera llevado a la terraza de su casa para que los huevecillos, que seguramente tenía, prosperaran si la madre los encontraba antes que las ardillas. Se quedó mirando fijamente para descifrar el contenido del nido. Sintió el viento de la madrugada arreciar y la primera claridad llevarse la noche. Pensó que era hora de volver a casa. Escuchó una patrulla; alguien había hecho lo correcto: avisar. Vio por última vez la estatura del árbol vencido e imaginó el aumento de luz que su ausencia provocaría en la ventana de la cocina. Eso sería todo lo que quedaría de aquel árbol: un boquete como memoria de su sombra. Cerró la puerta tras de sí, y antes de recostarse junto al plácido dormir de su marido, entró al cuarto de los niños 24

y colocó su mano con suavidad para comprobar el vaho de su respiración. Sosegada, prosiguió. Mañana se enterarían de lo que había ocurrido. Fingiría sorpresa. No contaría que estuvo allí sentada en el silencio de la noche, asistiendo al duelo. Omitiría que la noche fue suya.

Author’s Note on “The Tree” Once I saw a fallen tree in front of the house where I lived. It was night, the sudden noise and darkness unusual. I felt a certain complicity with the rare event, with the tree’s fragility, its solitude and tragedy. I lived with my husband and daughters upstairs from the shop that was my parents’ business, and the image of those branches embedded in the grating, invading a section of the parking lot, was powerful. It stayed with me. I don’t know if I wrote something in a journal then, but the truth is the event became the raw material for this story that had to be titled “The Tree.” I live in Mexico City, and the city has its own ways of speaking. It seemed to me that this was such a moment. I enjoy the idea of the extraordinary interrupting everyday life, enjoy exploring fragility, silences. And this story gave me such an opportunity. Translated by Patricia Dubrava

El árbol Una vez vi al árbol caído frente a la casa donde yo vivía, era de noche y la oscuridad y el ruido inusuales. Es cierto que sentí una complicidad con lo inusitado, con la fragilidad del árbol, con su soledad y la tragedia. La imagen de las ramas incrustadas en la reja, invadiendo un pedazo del estacionamiento de aquella casa donde yo vivía con mi marido e hijas en la parte de arriba de una tienda que era negocio de mis padres, fue muy poderosa. Se quedó allí; no sé si escribí algo en un diario entonces, lo cierto es que pudo ser material de este cuento que tenía que tener como título “El árbol”. Vivo en la Ciudad de México, la ciudad tiene sus maneras íntimas de hablar: me pareció que este era un momento así. Me gusta la idea de lo extraordinario irrumpiendo en la vida de todos los días, me gusta explorar la fragilidad, los silencios. Y este cuento me dio la oportunidad. Mónica Lavín

Translator’s Note I generally employ the Gregory Rabassa method of translation, and read stories as I’m translating them, so coming upon the Raymond Carver reference in Mónica Lavín’s “The Tree” was a pleasant surprise. I knew Ray Carver in Sacramento in 1966-1967, when I lived in a communal house steaming with political and arts activity, including the publication of an ephemeral literary magazine called The Levee. By “publication,” I mean we mimeographed the pages and sat in a circle to collate, fold and staple them. Ray provided early revision lessons, suggesting changes to a poem of mine that was to be included. I was twenty and thought poems came whole, from divine fountainheads. I had completed a first draft of “The Tree” when I visited Mónica Lavín last summer in Mexico City. Her Coyoacan living room is covered by bookshelves to which I am drawn as filings are to magnets. I immediately recognized the spine of Where I’m Calling From among the English language literature on her shelves. “You know,” I said, “your story is a kind of Carver story, an homage.” “Really?” She asked. “I hadn’t thought of that. It’s inspired by something that happened.” Much fiction is built on something that happened. And writers don’t always realize 29

all the layers their work has woven. “The Tree” is a Mexican woman’s version of a Carver story: domestic, quiet, with a subtle, solitary epiphany. The challenge on first translating any writer is becoming acclimated to her vocabulary, syntax, rhythm—all the things that make up individual style. Beginning to translate Mónica Lavín was a challenging climb. Counting “The Tree,” I’ve now translated fifteen of her stories. Aspects of her writing have become familiar in the way they only can in the process of translation. There is no closer reading of a text. As Simon Leys said, “Translation is the severest test to which a book can be submitted.” I start noticing repetitive phrasing, particular ways of putting a sentence together, become better at rendering them, at being able to say, “I know what she means and a literal translation won’t work, but I can find a way to say it in English.” By the time I returned home from Mexico last summer, “The Tree” draft had cooled, and its inadequacies surfaced, as they do with time. I completed a second draft and a third. Then, months later, before I sent it out into the world, I revised it again, the culmination of a technique I began learning from Ray Carver so many years ago. Patricia Dubrava 30