What you’ll find below is an excerpt from the very start ofÌęVladivostok Circus by Elisa Shua Dusapin & Aneesa Abbas Higgins. You might remember Dusapin & Higgins as the winners of the 2021 National Book Award for Literature in Translation forÌęWinter in Sokcho, and as the stellar team behind the English-language follow-up, Pachinko Parlor.

Vladivostok CircusÌęis coming out from Daunt Books in the UK in February 2024 () and ours drops in May 2024 . . . which is quite some time from now! (Kind of.) Anyway, since it is #WITMonth, since this one of our lead titles, and since I’m feeling generous (?), you can . (Only available in the U.S.) That discount is only good until midnight Pacific Time, August 31st.ÌęSo, time is of the essence!

Here’s the jacket copy:

Tonight is the opening night. There are birds perched everywhere, on the power lines, the guy ropes, the strings of light that festoon the tent . . . when I think of all those little bodies suspended between earth and sky, it makes me smile to remind myself that for some of them, their first flight begins with a fall.Ìę

Nathalie arrives at the circus in Vladivostok, Russia, fresh out of fashion school in Geneva. She is there to design the costumes for a trio of artists who are due to perform one of the most dangerous acts of all: the Russian Bar.

As winter approaches, the season at Vladivostok is winding down, leaving the windy port city empty as the performers rush off to catch trains, boats and buses home; all except the Russian bar trio and their manager. They are scheduled to perform at a festival in Ulan Ude, just before Christmas.

What ensues is an intimate and beguiling account of four people learning to work with and trust one another. This is a book about the delicate balance that must be achieved when flirting with death in such spectacular fashion, set against the backdrop of a cloudy ocean and immersing the reader into Dusapin’s trademark dreamlike prose.

Enjoy! And order now! As soon as the finished copies arrive—well in advance of the pub date—I’ll personally ship these out to everyone who preorders.

Vladivostok Circus

They don’t seem to be expecting me. The man in the ticket booth checks the list of names for the hundredth time. He’s just ushered out a group of women, all with the same muscular build, their hair scraped back. I can see the glass dome of the building on the other side of the barrier, the marbled stone of the walls beneath this season’s posters. I’m here for the costumes, I tell him again. In the end he turns away, stares at a television screen. He probably doesn’t understand English, I think to myself. I sit down on my suitcase, try calling Leon, the director, the one I’ve been corresponding with. My phone battery flashes low, only 3 per cent left. I hear myself laugh nervously as I look around for somewhere to charge it. I’m about to walk away when I hear someone calling out to me from inside the circus building. A man comes running towards me, steadying his glasses on his nose. Tall and lanky, not at all like the girls I saw a moment ago. I’d say he was in his thirties.

“Sorry,” he says in English. “I wasn’t expecting you until next week! I’m Leon.”

“Beginning of November. Isn’t that what we said?”

“You’re right, I’m all over the place.”

Elisa Shua Dusapin

He leads me round the outside of the building to a small courtyard, fenced on one side. Beyond the fence, the ocean, the shoreline visible through the gaps. Paper lanterns dangle from the branches of a tree. A beige-colored caravan looms large over the metal furniture set out beside it. Tables littered with plates, some doubling as ashtrays, others streaked with tomato sauce. Scrunched-up sportswear and lace-trimmed undergarments strewn on chairs.

I follow him inside the building, down a dark, curving hallway. He translates the signs pinned to the doors for me: offices, backstage access, arena floor. Bedrooms and dressing rooms upstairs. We come to a staircase. He excuses himself for a moment saying he needs to catch the circus director at dinner and runs up the stairs.

A cat gazes at me from the top of the staircase, its coat is white, almost pink. I stretch out my hand and the cat pads down the stairs towards me. The peculiar pinkish hue is its skin color. A cat with almost no fur. It rubs up against my legs. I pull myself upright, feeling vaguely repulsed.

Leon comes back, another man at his side, fiftyish, platinum-colored hair, firm handshake. He starts talking to me in Russian; Leon translates for me as he speaks. He’s sorry about the misunderstanding, I’m a bit early. A short laugh. He’s certainly not going to turn me away, I’ve come such a great distance. He’s honored to be hosting a talented young designer from the European fashion world. Vladivostok Circus’s major autumn show is still running. It’ll be closing for the winter at the end of the week. Until then, I’m welcome to come to as many shows as I like. The only problem is accommodation: the rooms are all taken by the artists. I can move in after they’ve left.

I force a smile, say I’ll manage just fine. The director claps his hands, perfect! I mustn’t hesitate to ask him if there’s anything I need.

He disappears into his office before I have a chance to respond. I thank Leon for translating. He shrugs. He used to teach English, he’s Canadian. He’s happy to help me. I tell him what’s on my mind: I’ve only just finished college, my training’s been in theatre and film, I’ve never worked for a circus, he did know that, didn’t he? And I’m not sure I understand how this is all going to work if the artists are all leaving at the end of the season. Leon nods. Yes, it wasn’t really made clear. Usually, everyone leaves, the performers all go and work for Christmas circuses. But our group, the Russian bar trio, have arranged with the director to stay on here at the circus rent-free while they work on their new number. They’ll perform it at the Vladivostok spring show in exchange.

“Anton and Nino are big stars,” Leon explains. “It’s a good deal for the circus. Not sure if it’s so good for Anton and Nino, but that’s the way it is.”

I try and look convinced, sizing up the gulf that separates me from this world. All I know about the three I’m working with is that they’re famous for their Black Bird number, in which Igor, the flyer, performs five perilous triple jumps on the Russian bar. I’ve looked it up and gleaned some information about this piece of equipment: it’s a flexible bar, three meters in length with a diameter of twenty centimeters. The two bases carry the bar on their shoulders while the third member of the group executes moves on it, leaping high in the air and flying free, without a wire. It’s one of the most dangerous of all circus acts.

“Were you the one who created the number with Igor?” I ask.

“No, not me. I didn’t even know him before his accident.”

“Accident?”

“Didn’t you know? He hasn’t jumped for five years. They have a new flyer. Anna.”

He says she’s gone into town with Nino, but Anton’s here, in his room. He can introduce me if I like, or else tomorrow after the show. I tell him tomorrow will be fine.

“Yes, that’s probably best. Anton can get by in quite a few languages but he doesn’t speak much English.”

The show has finished for today. He has to tidy up. Would I like to come with him? I’m very tired, I say, I have to find a hotel, and what about my luggage? Oh, he’ll help me with all that, he says, with a sweeping gesture of the hand.

*

Aneesa Abbas Higgins

Backstage, a pungent animal smell hits me. Straw scattered on the ground. Streaks of dirt on the walls. Like a stable but with velvet lining—hoops instead of horses, waist-high wooden balls, metal poles, tangles of cables, drones in the shape of planes, straw hats hanging on hooks. Leon tugs a cord and the curtains part.

I walk out into the ring. Carpeting on the ground, rumpled here and there, talcum powder and splashes of water, traces of the show that finished earlier. The space seems smaller than I’d expected, less imposing than when seen from the outside. Four hundred seats at the most. Red risers, velvet-covered seating. A platform overhangs the public entrance, with six chairs, music stands, a drum set, and a double bass.

“Do you need a hand?” I ask, watching Leon climb up one of the towers located at intervals around the edge of the ring.

He doesn’t respond and I breathe a sigh of relief. I can’t see myself going up there to join him. He unhooks a trapeze, disturbing one of the spotlight projectors as he moves around. The spotlight begins to wobble, its beam falling on a torn curtain over a window. I can see a section of the sky through the tear in the fabric. It’s dark outside, and still only six o’clock. The sky is studded with stars.

Leon starts rolling up a carpet.

“Can I do anything to help?” I say again.

He shakes his head, straining from the effort. With the dirt floor freed from its covering, the odor intensifies, as if the smell emanated from here, from unseen animals trampled beneath our feet.

“It smells pretty strong.”

“It stinks, you mean!” Leon exclaims.

He says the circus doesn’t use animals now. He hasn’t seen any in the seven years he’s been working here. The smell hasn’t gone away though. No one seems to know why.

“It’s not so bad right now, but in the summer, with the heat, the lights, the people. It really stinks.”

He glances around the ring and adds in a hushed voice: “I don’t think any of this has ever been properly cleaned.”

He goes backstage again. The lights go down. I turn back to look at the ring again before joining him. A gleam of light from a lamppost filters in through a gap in the curtains, casting a yellow glow on the risers. It makes everything look much more old-fashioned, a scene from another century. The beam of light hits the double bass. Lying on its side, the bow across its hips, the bass looks as if it’s resting, weary of carving out its tune, waiting for tomorrow’s performance.

If you’re in the UK, preorder from ! If you’re in the States, for 40% off! (If you’re in Canada, email me at chad.post [at] rochester.edu and we can figure something out.)

Today’s #WITMonth post is a preview for an Open Letter title coming out next summer, which isn’t even available for sale anywhere yet. It’sÌę

“Sis, I want to tell you about the river. ÄąčœŽ«Ăœ me in the river. It makes me shiver, tremble. It makes me laugh. It’s been so long since I’ve felt this alive . . .”

Rute is no stranger to displacement and loss. As a child she and her older sister, Dina, were subject to their mother’s romantic whims, moving from house to house, boyfriend to boyfriend. Then, when the sisters were in their late twenties, Dina disappeared. In the decade that has since passed, Rute has become a husk of her former self, going through the motions in work, life, and love, composing daily letters to Dina in the hopes they’ll one day see each other again.Ìę

When the sisters’ biological father, JĆ«le, dies, Rute unexpectedly inherits his country property. Curious about this man she’s never really known, she takes the opportunity to flee the city, the people, herself. But once in the countryside she meets Matilde, the young, single mother from next door who (along with her brother Kristof) was practically raised by JĆ«le. Rute learns about JĆ«le, a generous soul whose door and heart were always open to those less fortunate.Ìę

Haunting, sparse, and echoing Scandinavian greats like Kjersti Skomsvold, Laura Vinogradova’sÌęžéŸ±±č±đ°ùÌęis a tightly crafted work that defies resolutions and endings, instead hailing the importance and beauty of the personal journey to one’s internal truths and external freedoms.

ÌęThe book isn’t quite available for preorder yet, but stay tuned, and we’ll let you know when it is!

Before

Dina likes Rute’s place. There’s a warmth to it. The kind of warmth that is oblivious to the weather outside. As soon as she steps into her sister’s apartment, Dina takes off her boots and socks and stands for some time, barefoot, soaking up the warmth. Rute has heated floors; Rute has everything.

—What are you doing? Rute laughs.

—Have you been outside?

—No, I’ve been working. What is it?

—The wind, little sister, the wind.

—There’s wind in here, too, Rute laughs again and blows into Dina’s face.

Laura Vinogradova

Then they drink coffee. Rute orders a pizza. Dina’s eyes wander around the kitchen; they hungrily take in every beautiful detail, because Rute’s place is beautiful. Warm and beautiful. Sometimes Dina wants to call her out on it. Tell her she’s spoiled. Tell her Stefans has spoiled her. Because Dina can’t escape. She can’t escape the cold, the loneliness. And sometimes she feels like she can’t even try. Can’t be free, doesn’t deserve to be free. And then she gets angry at Rute. Because Rute shouldn’t be living in an apartment like this. Shouldn’t have heated floors or love, shouldn’t be stringing fairy lights from all the shelves.

Rute has a jar of kombucha fermenting on the windowsill. When Dina sees it, she chokes on her coffee and laughs while wheezing.

—What’s that? she points to the jar.

—Kombucha, Rute says.

—Why is there lace over the top of it? Dina laughs again.

Rute pouts and says nothing.

—It reminds me of something. Dina grows thoughtful and stops laughing.

—Kombucha? Rute’s voice drips with sarcasm.

But Dina shakes her head. The pizza is delivered. The sisters eat, their fingers greasy, and forget about the kombucha.

—Walk me out? Dina asks, but Rute shakes her head.

—I want to get a bit more translating done.

They hug each other tightly; Rute blows Dina a kiss, and the door closes behind her.

After that, everything happens too fast to make sense of it. Too fast to scream, too forceful to fight back. Dina gets off the No. 6 tram at the Mārkalne stop and heads for home. The street she’s walking down is quiet and empty, with a few cold cars and a red minivan parked along the side of the street. It’s a snowless, windy January, and Dina retreats deeper into her scarf. It happens in a second: three men jump out of the van, grab her, and pull a bag over her head. They lift her like a rag doll and toss her into the back of the van. No screams. No movement. Dina freezes and gives in having, at some point in her life, stopped fighting back.

She lies silent in the back of the van and tries to think. Is she hurt? Will she survive this? Will it happen quickly? But she can’t think clearly. Her goddamn mind is trapped in this bag. Everything is trapped, even her fear. She doesn’t feel afraid. What she feels are her pants, wet, cold, plastered to her skin. She’s pissed herself. They seem to have left Riga because the van is driving straight, smooth, and fast. Dina is curled up into a ball, lying in her own urine, with a bag over her head. Suddenly, she realizes what Rute’s kombucha reminded her of.

*

At the time, Dina would have been around ten years old. One day their mother, without a word, had taken her and Rute to live with Aigars. No, we’re not going back home, their mother had told the girls, and they never brought it up again. Their mother loved Aigars just as much as she’d loved Vladimir before him, and Igor before him, and Jānis somewhere in between. Aigars wasn’t bad, he left the girls alone. He never spoke to them, and the girls quickly learned to remain silent. If they talked or laughed, it meant a black eye for their mother. Their mother loved Aigars even with her black eye, so the girls weren’t worried.

Kaija Straumanis

The sisters didn’t have their own room at first, instead sharing one with their mother and Aigars. They were set up on the floor behind the wardrobe, with a quilt to sleep on and a small night light. But it was still dark. Each night, Dina had to listen to their mother’s panting and snoring, and Aigars’s moaning. Dina and Rute wet their “bed” on the very first night. Dina had been embarrassed to tell their mother, but she worked up the courage and finally did. The girls were given a clean sheet, but the same thing happened the next night and the night after that. Dina woke up on a quilt that was wet and a sheet with a large yellow stain on it. She pulled on her jeans and went to school, but she could feel that damp cold on her legs the entire day. She didn’t say anything to their mother again—they didn’t have that many clean sheets, and their mother was busy. Aigars wanted to spend every second with her. He didn’t like it when she wanted to play with Dina and Rute.

The girls spent several months sleeping behind the wardrobe. They wet the bed every night. Sometimes they couldn’t tell if it had been only Dina, or only Rute, or both of them. They’d study the stains on the sheets, trying to make sense of it, but what did it matter? Either way, the bed was wet. Either way, it stank. Either way, they had to sleep there again. Every morning Dina would pull back the sheet and hope it would be the last time, that everything would dry out and she wouldn’t wet the bed anymore. But she did. And so did Rute.

Then they got their own room, and in the process of moving them their mother saw their sleeping space for the first time. She saw the piss-stained sheets. The cotton quilt they used as a mattress had started to mold. Their mother said nothing; neither did the girls. Urine isn’t something you talk about.

Having their own room was better. They had their own beds and were given special mattress covers to go under the sheets. Dina’s bed stayed dry the first few days, and she was happy because she thought she’d conquered bed-wetting. There was one morning when Rute’s bed was wet, but she was still little. She couldn’t hold it in.

One night, Dina woke up needing to pee. But the toilet was outside, and to get to it, she’d have to go by Aigars’s room. What if she woke him and he got angry? What if he took it out on their mother? Because he did that when he got angry. The times he got angry like that it seemed that their mother didn’t love him after all, but that wasn’t true. She did love him. She’d cry, rub ointment on her bruises, and go on loving him.

Dina got an idea. On the table was a jar of water used for rinsing paint brushes. She’d pee in there. She squatted, positioned the jar under herself, and tried to aim in the dark. She filled it completely, a bit of warm urine dripping onto her hands. But Dina was pleased with her solution. Her bed would stay dry, and she wouldn’t reek at school. She found a few more jars in the courtyard and secretly stashed them in their room. She filled those, too. When she ran out of jars, she peed into a vase that was in the girls’ room because Aigars didn’t like vases. And when she ran out of vases, she peed in the bowl that sat under the flowerpot.

On rare occasions she would take the jars out to empty them. Very rarely. And so, the urine-filled jars would turn dark, cloudy. They looked like jars of kombucha. Now she remembers.

*

The van stops. Dina is dragged outside and through the bag she can feel the damp sea air. She recognizes it because Vladimir, whom her mother had loved, had lived by the sea. The sea air makes up a bit of her childhood air. We all start at childhood. She takes a deep breath of the damp air and savors it. And there’s a sharp pain on the back of her head. Then darkness.

River by Laura Vinogradova, translated from the Latvian by Kaija Straumanis, will be available from Open Letter Books in the summer of 2024.

Forthcoming in a new “Dalkey Essentials” edition,Ìę

It’s also one of George Saunders’s favorite books! He plugged the opening line (“The Americans who fell in Normandy in 1944 were tall men measuring 173 centimeters on average, and if they were laid head to foot they would measure 38 kilometers.”) in Elle,Ìęand the book as a whole inÌęBOMB:

It’s an alternate history of the twentieth century, all true, but arranged in a weird way. For example, he starts the fascist era by concentrating on American nationalist groups like the ones Charles Lindbergh was involved with. It throws your whole sense of history off, and yet every word in it is true.

The section below is in honor ofÌęBarbieÌęandÌęOppenheimer.ÌęIt’s long. It’s worth it. Enjoy.

Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century

by Patrik OurednĂ­k

translated from the Czech by Gerald Turner

With the emancipation of women and the invention of contraception and tampons and disposable diapers there were fewer children in Europe but more toys and kindergartens and slides and climbing frames and dogs and hamsters, etc. Sociologists said that the child had become the center of attention in the family and gradually its most influential component also. And children wanted to be independent and have their own identity and did not want to wear their older siblings’ hand-me-down caps or shoes and they always wanted new caps and shoes and colored pencils and construction sets and teddy bears and dolls. In the European countries twelve-and-a-half thousand times more dolls were manufactured in the twentieth century than in the nineteenth century and instead of wood and sawdust they were made of plastics and in the course of time they learnt to whimper and talk and were more and more independent, and they would say good morning and enjoy your meal, for instance, and some of them could weep and burp after eating or sing part of an aria. The best-known doll was called Barbie and was first manufactured in 1959. It was 30 centimeters tall and had big breasts and hips and a slim waist and was the first doll to behave like an adult. Soon it started to talk too and said i’ve got a date with my boyfriend this evening and what will i wear to the dance? and would you like to go clothes shopping with me? At first she was dressed like a ballerina or an actress or a model, then later as a stewardess, a teacher, a veterinarian, a businesswoman, an astronaut, or a presidential candidate. And in 1986, a Barbie doll appeared dressed in a striped concentration-camp uniform and a striped cap too. Various ex-prisoners associations protested and said it made a mockery of the suffering and the memory of the victims, and the manufacturers answered back and said that, on the contrary, it was an appropriate way of acquainting the younger generation with the suffering in the concentration camps, and that little girls who bought the doll in the striped uniform would identify with it and later, when they were grown up, they would more easily comprehend what sort of suffering there was. And in 1998 the Germans came up with the idea of erecting in Berlin a large monument to the victims of the Holocaust, which was to be visible from afar, because, in addition to celebrating some positive historical event, the function of a monument is also to be a warning to future generations. Some people thought that an art object was not the proper way of expressing the Holocaust, which defies all aesthetic rules, and others concluded that the ideal project would be one that expressed the fact that the Holocaust defied expression. And four hundred and ninety-five artists sent various proposals for expressing a warning to future generations and one proposed manufacturing a large, eight-colored, six-pointed star turning on its own axis, and others proposed constructing an enormous Ferris wheel, on which concentration-camp wagons would be hung in place of the usual fair-ground cars, and others proposed constructing a large bus station with red buses and timetables on which the terminal stations would be the names of concentration camps, and others proposed erecting thirty-nine steel posts on which why? would be written in various languages, warum?, waarom?, varfĂžr?, proč?, pourquoi?, perchĂ©?, dlaczego?, cĆ«r?, kuida?, miksi?, miĂ©rt?, zakaj?, kodĂȘl?, hvorfor?, jiatĂ­?, pse?, niçin?, etc. Some people were of the opinion that it ought to be a monument to the victims not only of the Holocaust, but of all possible genocides, because only in that way would it contain the living historical memory, otherwise it would be simply a heap of steel or iron that would say nothing to anyone within twenty or so years. And some historians said that building monuments was problematic in all events, because preserving the memory of some event did not of itself guarantee that it would not be repeated, and they provided instances of preserving memory that had led to fresh conflicts and wars.

The Jews who survived the Holocaust said that monuments and museums, etc., were important, but that best of all were direct testimonies, and they would visit schools to tell the pupils what they had gone through. And they wondered how to preserve the memory of the Holocaust after their deaths, and the Swedish association of former Jewish prisoners recommended passing on their testimony to some young person, who would learn it by heart and visit schools and tell the pupils that they had known someone who had experienced such and such. And before they died they would pass the testimony on to another young person, etc. And in 1945, the Jews issued an appeal to public opinion, requesting the establishment of an Israeli state in Palestine, where the Jews could be among their own and would not have to fear any more holocausts. And they fought against the Arabs and the English, who were occupying Palestine at the time, and organized assassinations and illicit immigration operations. And in 1939, the English decreed immigration quotas that reduced the number of Jewish immigrants by 75% and enacted a law prohibiting Jews from buying land. And in 1947, a ship docked in Palestine with illegal Jewish immigrants from Germany and the English sent it back again. And in 1938, the Swedish government requested the German authorities to insert a capital J in passports for Jews, so that the Swedish frontier police could recognize a Jew who did not look like one. The ship that docked in Palestine was called exodus after a book of the Old Testament and 4,500 Jews were sailing in her, having survived the concentration camps and wanting to return to the Promised Land. And in November, the United Nations voted in favor of the creation of the State of Israel. And lots of people in Europe traveled to Israel to see the new state in creation. And young people from Europe went to work in Jewish agricultural communes known as kibbutzim, where everyone worked for the good of all. And everything was shared and everyone sang songs together. And the Israeli travel agencies issued posters on which young people with serious expressions observed the sun rising over Jerusalem, and underneath was written our suffering was not in vain and take advantage of low prices.

Sexologists said that the Barbie doll was the first tool for inculcating a feminine identity in young girls, and the doll’s successful reception proved that child sexuality existed. Child sexuality was much spoken about in the twentieth century after it was discovered that little girls would like to have a child with their father, which was actually a substitute penis because little girls would like a penis too, and the doll was a child from their father and a penis at the same time. For a long time only little girl dolls were made but then they started to manufacture little boy dolls, and little girl dolls had a groove between their legs and little boy dolls had a little penis. And in the seventies, they started to manufacture black or brown dolls, although they were mostly bought by white parents who wanted to show their children they were not racists. Racism was a theory from the nineteenth century that said that the human races have immutable characteristics, and they were at different levels of development and the most developed were the white race which had an innate sense of social organization and abstract thought and convivial entertainment, and a racist was someone who feared that mixing between races jeopardized the specific characteristics of the white race and eroded the genetic potential that enabled the whites to continue advancing in the forefront of mankind. People who did not like Jews were not racists but anti-Semites, because the Jews were not strictly regarded as inferior, like Negroes, Indians, Gypsies, etc., but more of a natural aberration. The word anti-Semite appeared at the end of the nineteenth century and denoted a person who did not want the Jews to rule the world and called on their fellow citizens to resist. Racism became a major social problem after the Second World War because large ethnic minorities settled in the rich European countries, and society had to absorb them. There existed two models for absorbing ethnic minorities—integration and assimilation, and integration was adopted by countries that believed that various cultural models could coexist within civil society and that it was better not to mix one with another and for each of them to preserve its specific character, and assimilation was implemented by countries that believed in universalism and were of the opinion that there existed a higher social interest that took precedence over specific ethnic and cultural characteristics. For a long while it looked as if the assimilation model was more successful, because in the countries that implemented it there were no race riots such as there were in England, America, etc., but at the end of the century, when people started to talk about globalism, universalism went out of fashion and everybody wanted to have their own identity and be proud of their race, but not in the sense of race, but civilization and live in accordance with traditions and return to their roots, etc.

Sex became very important in Europe in the twentieth century, more important than religion and almost as important as money, and everyone wanted to have sexual intercourse in different ways and some men rubbed their sexual organ with cocaine to prolong their erection even though cocaine was banned in all circumstances. And after the Second World War films started to include scenes in which the leading characters had sexual intercourse, which was previously considered improper because lots of people still believed in God and sexual intercourse was generally only hinted at by a shot of a bed or a clock or the sky, or it suddenly went dark. And women wanted to have orgasms all the time and that made men nervous and they had problems with erections and tried various aphrodisiacs and attended psychoanalysis to discover where the problem lay, such as whether they might have suffered some childhood trauma that they were unaware of. Psychoanalysis was invented in 1900 by a Viennese neurologist who wanted to study mental processes and evaluate subjects by means of the unconscious, and he came to the conclusion that neurosis, hysteria, etc., were symptoms of sexual traumas in childhood, and he devised for this purpose new methods and concepts such as repetitive compulsion, regression, repression, ego, superego, libido and complexes, which could be either Oedipal or castration complexes. And in 1938 he fled from the Nazis to London and four of his sisters died in concentration camps. And when patients knew why they were depressed and neurotic they immediately felt better because it was normal. Communists said that people who lived in a Communist society had no need for sex because people’s greatest happiness should be from work well done, whereas in capitalism people did not get enjoyment from their work because they were exploited and therefore resorted to various surrogates. And they said that without class consciousness sex could not bring satisfaction even it were repeated endlessly and they were afraid that if people were to attend psychoanalysis and resort to surrogates it would threaten the cohesion of the socialist camp. And they did not want people to read decadent books or wear garish clothes, have eccentric hairstyles, chew gum, etc. Chewing-gum was invented by an American pharmacist and was first sold in Europe in 1903, although its use spread mainly in the fifties and sixties. It was mostly chewed by young people, who thereby expressed their attitude towards society and didn’t have fillings in their mouths yet.

In the fifties film heroes usually had sexual intercourse in cornfields because cornfields were associated with youth and the new life awaiting the young heroes, and wind ruffled the ears of corn as the sun sank on the horizon and women’s bosoms heaved, and in the sixties film heroes had sexual intercourse in the surf on the ocean shore because it was romantic and sand clung to their skin, and their bottoms could be seen, and mist hung over the water. [. . .]

Ìęby Mati Unt

translated from Estonian by Ants Eert (Dalkey Archive Press)

AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION

A crow was riding the wind that came in low over the beach. Sand blew through the window, landed on my papers, entered my mouth. A yellowish light tainted the room, even my fingers. I carefully reread the letter from this morning’s mail, but it remained impenetrable. A complete stranger, writing in Russian, wanted me to meet him next Sunday in Leningrad where the cruiser Aurora was docked.

Next Sunday, Leningrad, Aurora?

A week from no, hundreds of kilometers from Tallinn?

What’s going on?

Having explained nothing, the letter’s last line threatened: This meeting in vital.

It was unsigned.

The kind of letter that should go right into the garbage. Except . . .

Except:

Vital for whom? For me? Him?

Is it an emergency?

Have I inherited a fortune?

Am I dealing with a spy?

A seductive woman?

A wealthy foreign publisher?

What have I overlooked?

Are they luring me away to be murdered?

Is it an admirer of my novels?

Or some poor bastard about to die?

Army counterespionage?

I put the letter away again, and for the third time decided not ot go anywhere. Am I a marionette to be yanked around on a string? An anonymous letter arrives and immediately I get ready to run off on a fool’s errand.

Who’s the fool?

Apparently it’s me.

As an obscure writer, freedom fighters and spies tend to ignore me. It’s true that once in a while letters come to enlighten me on some brand-new world order or synergy, with copious details appended. But the cruiser Aurora, the cradle of revolution, the ship that fired the shot on October 25, 1917, signaling the beginning of the assault on the Winter Palace—what’s it got to do with me? Sure, my life has been affected by that infamous shot, but so have the lives of the thousands of people around me. Will all of us now be called to the Aurora? Perhaps it’s only those who approve of the revolution? Or only those who disapprove? If I alone was invited, how was I selected?

No, this is just a silly joke. Or maybe revenge? But for what?

What have I done?

Everyone’s guilty of something—am I any guiltier than anyone else?

That’s it: I’m going to ignore the letter.

Using the last packet my Finnish publisher had sent me, I brewed some coffee, added sugar I had obtained with my ration card, and to steady my shaky nerves, invented all sorts of excuses for doing nothing: gas stations are out of gas, trains are overbooked, buses are overcrowded—I can’t travel at all, our Great State is in a lot of trouble. Gas has all but disappeared because the rail services that bring it in have been almost completely shut down. Public transportation is bone dry too. Am I supposed to walk to Leningrad? I do have some bread left; no point in going to the grocery, since there’s also a sausage shortage on. Shortages promote self-reliance. At least something good has come out of this mess, thank God: There’s nothing to be gained by going out. Let them write and invite. I’ll withdraw, learn to know myself, tell the world to go to hell; I can’t be bothered watching the end of the world, won’t cry at its grave. Far better to stay on the sofa with its springs poling me in the ass—there are no upholsterers available, and anyway no sofa covers. I do have some soap saved up, a whole cake; I’ve even hoarded a tube of toothpaste. There’s no way I’m going down to the cruiser Aurora. I’ll ignore everyone and everything. Of course, poverty and lack of means shouldn’t really be an excuse for turning one’s back on adventure. A colleague of mine recently visited North Korea, and another one went to Mongolia. Far away corners of the world, where the sun is hot and the people and their habits are inscrutable. Going to the cruiser would be a new experience, no? I might get a short story out of it, or the beginning of a novel? The last living member the Czar’s family wants to reveal everything to me, yet here I sit, stretched out on a shabby sofa, protecting my ivory tower.

What if terrorists are planning to blow up the cruiser, and I’d have a front-row seat for the event? Front-row seat? Or maybe I’d be blown up with the ship?

I’m not sticking my neck out.

Still, I guess the ship could sail and take me along. I’ve written about the ships and the sea. I did write a commemorative article on Lennart Meri, but that hardly qualifies me as a naval historian.

Am I being accosted by a radical organization getting ready to set off another revolution and planning to blow up the Aurora in order to publicize their cause? And afterwards they’ll supervise a ceremonial casting of flowers onto the waves? And make endless, boring speeches? But in that case the letter would have had a declaration in it, a slogan or two. If I was being courted by revolutionaries, I would’ve been invited to a bar in some dank cellar, not a pier. So, could it be a woman who adores me? But in that case the letter would have had at least a few loving words in it—especially since I’m known to be such a sucker for sentimentality. A homosexual, perhaps? I’ve never been mistaken for one, and in any case, the symbolism here—a long ship with big guns and a proud prow splitting the waves—is just too obvious.

Could it be something to do with the subconscious? The Flying Dutchman? Long John Silver? Moby Dick? The ship of transcendence, its mast pointing up at the North star, following the axis of the Earth? Could it be I’ve been invited to the White Ship that everyone is waiting for, the ship that never comes to our shores except to bring us across the Styx?

But the letter is matter of fact. Fine sand settles on my papers. I stand by the window.

A PICTURE FROM MY YOUTH

The cruiser Aurora fired her gun on the night of October 25, 1917, and after that she toured Helsinki and Kronstadt. In 1946 she became an icon on the Neva River.

Many old ships have earned their retirements.

The “Oseberg” Viking ship near Oslo.

Fitzcarraldo’s ship in the rain forest.

The following happened in a youth camp at VĂ€rska in 1964.

I’ve forgotten the names of the camp commandant and his staff, but I do remember that the project was progressive. None of us were there looking for glory or an easy way up the bureaucratic ladder by supporting the prevailing ideology. A few of us were in our twenties, but most were still in middle school, barely fifteen years old. I do remember Mark Soosaar—now a film director—who at that time was a MC on the radio. I remember Mati Polder and Aare TĂŒsvĂ€lja too—they were television personalities. But things were different in those days. At night we caught crawdads, which may or may not have been a prohibited activity. We had lively discussions by the campfire, but the gist of our arguments, unfortunately, has escaped me. But I repeat: we were certainly progressive.

VĂ€rska, in the extreme Southeast of Estonia, is in a province of Setumaa. No wonder then that the wasteland there, where practically nothing grows, is called the Setumaa Sahara.

One day we took a walk in that desert. To avoid the heat we set out at dawn, but when the sun came up, the cooling wind disappeared. Scraggy bushes offered no shade. We walked for a long time. Sweat poured off us, and the water cans were empty. Exactly where we went I have no idea. No one wanted to be the first one to quit. On the contrary, the stronger people in the group seemed to be enjoying the misery of the weaker. We did pass a couple of farmsteads, where no one was to be seen. Duke Ellington’s “Caravan” sounded from one of their windows. It suited th occasion. We kept on going through the parched vegetation. Far away we heard some explosions—probably the Russian Air Force conducting exercises on the lake. Why a lake? Explosions over water sound different. Then, the figure of a fleshy, sun-baked, half-naked man appeared out of nowhere. He spoke gibberish, vaguely like our own language, but we didn’t understand a single word. Had his tongue been cut out? Lonely places guard many secrets, and witnessing something illegal can be dangerous. Perhaps his attacker was humane. Instead of killing him, he just made sure the witness couldn’t tell tales. How much can one reveal by waving one’s arm? Had we accidentally stumbled on some high political conspiracy? Or perhaps the man was drunk? Was there another possibility? The bravest among us indicated that we were thirsty. The man made agreeable noises, beckoned. After some hesitation we followed him. Surprise! Behind a bush was a boat half buried in sand. Two of the side planks were broken, and on the board where the rower would normally sit, a lizard lazed in the sun—it quickly escaped. Our guide sat in the boat and took to rowing with imaginary oars. Was he acting out how he, in some gray time, arrived here, or would in some golden time depart? The man muttered something, as if inviting us to board the boat. We raised a cloud of dust getting away from him. Soon we were on our own again. It was possible that a long time ago this had been the shore of the lake. Maybe the boat had belonged to the grandfather of the tongueless man, a guerrilla in the last war, who had needed to hide his boat from the enemy?

Somehow we made it back to the camp. In the cool of the evening, we rowed across the river to a nearby camp of university students. We lit a fire on the bank of the river with two friendly young women and tried to get kissed—but nothing; I think they were each keeping an eye on the other. When it began to rain, we rowed back to our won camp. By this time the eastern sky was blushing red. On the way I quoted Ristikivi: After you left, you became a dream, but in my bed, my suffering continued. The morning brought on more philosophical discussions; we all voted for increased middle-school and university-student autonomy. That day was just as hot.

Having fashioned a grave

From the sea, darkness exudes

Terror where a whale-like

Aurora haunts the night

—Vladimir Mayakovsky

The novel is composed of three sections, each written in a distinct narrative voice and style.

In Part One, we are introduced to Wybrany College, an isolated boarding school cut off from an increasingly chaotic, violent world in decay. Short, fragmented sections alternate between the first person narration of Celia, a fifteen year old “Special,” or scholarship student, and a third person omniscient voice who frequently narrates from the perspective of Ignacio, a younger boy of twelve.

Part Two takes the form of 56 diary entries written by Isidro Bedregare, a newly-arrived substitute teacher who is taking the place of the absent profesor GarcĂ­a Medrano.

The epilogue, entitled “Heroes and Mercenaries: The Papers of García Medrano,” is composed, in effect, of García Medrano’s personal papers, which have come into the hands of the substitute Bedregare. Comprised of short sections—usually just several paragraphs long—depicting life in the “City,” García Medrano’s papers also reveal answers to the mysteries suggested in the elliptical first two parts of the novel.

In the original Spanish, the prose is marked by suggestion, insinuation, and a sense of unease, as well as allusions to some kind of event or shift in the outside world, a world like our own but existing in its own literary reality. The epilogue, in particular, feels allegorical or fable-like.

Mesa is engaged in literary world-building, too, as I should note that the city of Cárdenas appears in almost all the rest of Mesa’s work, including several of the stories in the collection Mala letra. And her first novel, An Invisible Fire, relates the last days of the city of Vado, which has become uninhabited and is referenced in the present novel.

Part One

Never More Than Two Hundred

CELIA

The contour of the landscape bends, yellows, and descends before dissolving in the distance. We are there, at the end, paused and panting under the motionless sky. It’s February and still cold. The air cuts off our breath, attacks Teeny’s lungs. She’s been sick for weeks.

We’ve never made it this far. Our sneakers are soaked from walking in the muddy grass, avoiding the roads.

We wait for Teeny to catch up and then convene a meeting.

“Should we eat breakfast now?” Valen asks.

Her chubby cheeks tremble. Valen is always hungry. The rest of us protest. It’s not time to eat. We’ve only stopped to decide where to continue on from here, from now. There is no time to waste; we’ll eat later, while we walk. Or we won’t eat at all.

We have two options: climb the hill until we reach the highway or follow the slope down and try to find the river. River is probably an exaggeration. Memory summons a groove, painted brown: a creek, at best. And memory doesn’t reveal its exact location, either. No one has been by here in years.

“I say we head for the highway. Then we can hitchhike wherever someone will take us.” Marina talks bravely but is chicken when it’s time for action. We’re not convinced.

I speak up. “Hitchhike? Are you crazy? They would bring us right back.”

“The river is safer,” Cristi says.

“But we don’t know where it is!” says Marina.

Cristi shrugs. Valen tries again, reaching for her backpack. “We could eat while we decide.”

“What do you think, Teeny?” I ask.

She looks up. Squints. The lenses of her glasses are fogged over. She coughs again. She coughs and blinks endlessly. Her nose runs. She’s full of fluid, Teeny is. I don’t even wait for her to respond. I speak for her: “Teeny doesn’t care what we do as long as we do it quick. Sitting around in this cold is going to kill her.”

“I think she should eat something,” Valen says.

“Shut up, you greasy fat ass,” Cristi says.

They fight. First, with insults. Then they throw themselves on the wet ground and roll around, theatrically, half-heartedly. Marina goads them. It’s not clear whose side she’s on. Teeny and I wait. She thinks about nothing and I try to think of everything.

It doesn’t matter. I see them coming in the 4×4, up the narrow, dusty path. They’re coming toward us and there we are, stopped, as stopped as time. A stirring of pride: thinking about being told off by the Booty or punished by the Head makes me feel better.

A quail chirps in the distance. Valen and Cristi get up, brush off their clothes, and look me in the eye. Neither one speaks, but I know they blame me.

IGNACIO

Wybrany College, seven in the evening. Ten or twelve boys in gym clothes hang around to see what’s happening. Silence has formed in the courtyard at the school’s entrance. Night is falling and HĂ©ctor walks escorted by his parents, the Head, and the Advisor. He walks by the boys. As he passes, he lifts his eyes and looks at Ignacio. At him, just him. The look is unmistakable, direct.

Ignacio shivers. The crunch of steps on the gravel lingers in his ears. He observes him from behind, the head of full, blonde hair, the smooth nape of his neck.

Only when he’s shaken roughly does he realize that they’ve been grumbling in his ear the whole time, and he hasn’t heard a thing.

“I’m talking to you, man, can’t you hear me?

Ignacio nods, craning his neck slightly toward the door through which the New Kid has disappeared.

The mother—or the woman he assumes is the mother—is outside, closing her umbrella. She has slender calves and iridescent stockings dotted with droplets of drizzle. Lux watches her, too, his head cocked and back arched, ready to flee at the slightest movement.

It’s November 1^st. Ignacio’s birthday: twelve years old and finally the prospect of a friend to protect him.

“I said, what do you think of him?” the other boy insists.

“What do I know? I just saw him, is all.”

“But he looks queer, right?”

“Yeah, queer.”

Ignacio senses that the light is different, more yellow, or hazy. He can’t watch and listen at the same time, but they keep at him and their insistence has the echo of a command.

“Why queer?” the other boy presses.

“What do you mean, why? You said it.”

“Yeah, but why? Why did you say it, too? What do you know about that?”

A sad smile dawns on Ignacio’s face. Trapped again, he thinks, but what does it matter now that he will finally have a friend to protect him. The New Kid is tall, he’s strong, and out of all the faces on display there in the courtyard, he chose to look at him.

The girls’ laughter comes from the other side of the wall, a restless laughter, musical. He yearns for girls, but only as classmates.

“Because he laughs like a girl.”

“And you’ve heard him laugh, have you?”

“Before, when he arrived.”

“Before, where?”

He frees himself from the arm that grabs him.

“Before. Let me go, I have to go to class.”

“Class? What class? Classes are over.”

“Let me go,” he begs.

“Sissy, fag, fucking cripple,” the other boy says, releasing him.

Ignacio hobbles away, in his big shoe with the lift. Laughter screeches at his back.

Real or imagined, Ignacio hears it all the time.

HECTOR’S ORIGINS

But the New Kid’s origins go back to before, weeks before, days before; not that time matters much in this place, where the days so resemble one another. They accumulate, pile up, build on each other, creating an impression of continuity, of movement, or evolution of something.

It’s important to note, perhaps, that HĂ©ctor isn’t present on this occasion. Just the mother, or the woman that looks like the mother, and the father—him, for sure—in the Head’s office. They are joined by the assistant head of school, AKA the Booty.

The office doesn’t look like an office. It’s like a magnificent living room, with its crystal chandeliers and perfectly-worn Persian rugs—so vulgar, if too new—and gleaming floor-to-ceiling windows, the glass spotless, free of flies.

Seated in leather armchairs around a low table, they speak for a long time with the particular stiffness to which they are accustomed.

The Booty—who was, in another time, very beautiful—discreetly keeps her distance. Only when necessary does she add an opportune fact, blinking before she speaks. In general, such facts relate to fees, services, and requirements, the details of which the Head is ignorant, given that he delegates this minutia to her.

The tone of the conversation is sickly-sweet, good taste gone off a bit.

The office smells of cologne. Which cologne? Impossible to say. A mix of various scents: those worn by the people now present, and by all those who are absent, too. Those who sat where they are now, finalizing the details of their progeny’s matriculation.

The scent of the select, one could say, if it weren’t an oversimplification, because that’s not exactly how it is. Though one couldn’t claim the opposite, either.

“You realize we’re making an exception . . .”

“We know, we know,” HĂ©ctor’s father says.

He moves his hands, accentuating his words, like he did when he was a government minister. A rhetorical underscore, unnecessary.

“It will be more expensive—due to the exception, as you can imagine—still, you do insist?”

“Yes, we insist, we insist. It’s absolutely necessary.”

“Although it won’t be easy for us, getting rid of the boy,” the woman adds.

“Getting rid of isn’t the right expression,” he says. His eyes flash. He looks at his wife and she goes quiet.

The Booty smiles at them both. They shouldn’t feel uncomfortable, she says. Language betrays us all. Parents undeniably feel a sense of relief when they enroll their children at the college; it happens to everyone. Bringing up a child is a complicated act of responsibility that demands extreme dedication. There’s nothing wrong with leaving a piece of it in the hands of experts.

“HĂ©ctor is a brilliant boy,” the woman continues, speaking cautiously now. “Very intelligent, headstrong, a bit mischievous, maybe. He always finds a way to make his uniform a little bit different: a patch, a hole, a button pinned somewhere. As you know, he needs to do things his way.”

“Ah, but that’s good,” the Head says. “That’s very good. It speaks of character, strength of character, manliness. We don’t go overboard on rules here. Strict on the fundamentals, flexible on incidentals. Our educational methods are liberal, they’re based in absolute freedom. Will you have some . . .” He stares at Lux, who has just slipped through the bars on the window, “. . . coffee?”

They drink from little porcelain cups, served with biscuits that they barely nibble. Then they settle everything else: the registration, monthly payments, additional installments. The visitors express their surprise that rooms are shared, but nod sensibly at the explanation.

“Boys on their own, at this age, are hard to control,” says the Booty. “This way they keep an eye on each other. Spending their free time alone is not to their benefit.”

“Obviously some boarding schools make private rooms a mainstay of their appeal,” the Head continues, “precisely because they have nothing else to offer. Special menus, all the latest technology, professional sports facilities, blah, blah, blah . . . They’re only focused on the functional aspects of the issue. We guarantee a sufficient level of material comfort. Not excellent, perhaps, but sufficient. But we also guarantee an extraordinarily high-quality education, which goes far beyond academics. We do not impose discipline: the children impose it on themselves. Rigorous, not rigid. Firm, not harsh. Personalities are sculpted, polished until they shine. The country’s best have passed through here. We know how to shape the best.”

He carefully cleans his beard with a napkin and waits for a reaction. The couple smiles. They are notably, visibly relaxed.

An agreement has been reached.

I think this is a very valuable resource, especially if one of the goals of the prize is to get these books translated into other languages. I’m looking forward to reading the samples and placing my bet on who’s going to win . . . (This is one of those awards you can gamble on, right?)