#12 PEDRO PARAMO (n/a)
by Juan Rulfo
Stephen from the underground gave it to me.
Walking down the steps at Piccadilly Circus to get on the Piccadilly line and a familiar yet unfamiliar voice calls out from the bottom,
Could anyone spare a small something to help me out?
Could anyone spare a little something?
I start making an explanation of inability when my water bottle unscrews the final mm & my genmaicha empties out onto the floor where he sits—oh god I'm so sorry—I leave immediately to go and press the help point on the platform and worry that it looks like I’m walking nonchalantly away from this mess that I’ve made then I'm back,
“Someone’s coming.”
I start offering him random things from my bag,
“Deep moisture mist?”
Na I'm pretty thirsty though have you got any water?
I hand him the (water) bottle and what’s left of the green tea inside—it’s yummy, I say by way of explanation—then show him my empty purse just so he know’s I’m not lying then apologise once more for the tea in his vicinity before walking away which is when I notice the stack of books where his money cup is sitting...
“What you got?”
He starts lifting
Siddhartha. Something by Kenzaburo Oe. You know Stoner? This is his other one. The third book in My Struggle. Mythologies by that French guy. Some Jung… but this one—
He stops
This one has been my find of the year.
He’s holding up a slim book now with a barren image on the front and he’s beating it in the air in front of me like a half-dead humming bird
(I’ve never heard of it)
“Find of the year?”
And I believe him so I get out my diary
Here he says. Just take this one
And hands it to me. So I reach into my bag and pull out THE ISLAND by Ana María Matute
“What about a trade? I have this one which is also… Spanish-sounding.”
Fiction?
“Yeah” I say, “don’t worry.”
And so we swap books—and like that, the deal is done.
When my train arrives I fall into it feeling high because this is exactly how I like to get my next novel—though I know I’ll have to come back and give him something else because I don’t entirely back poor Ana María so I turn around just before the doors shut
“What's your name?”
Stephen he says without looking at me. I'm Tilly I say unnecessarily & then I’m off. I see the guy from upstairs mopping up the floor after me.
As soon as I sit down I see the markings straightaway, fields of capital letters without breath. At first I think they’re illustrations but then I see they’re everywhere... somewhere in my horrible world-conscious maturity I stopped scribbling in my books because I thought it might increase their shelf-life somehow but now I realise how wrong I was… because this book here—covered in the markings of a well-read stranger—seems like treasure to me. I feel so stupid asking his name now. Couldn't I have asked something more sensible like
“What is it about this book?”
Because I’m struggling to get into it. It’s a bit like the experience of having an older lover where you feel the tower of potential experience clamouring above you and it’s kinda enlivening because at least for the first time in years you feel as if you have not experienced even half the emotions life has to offer…
But even then, it all feels a little too large, too various, too mystifying. For example, read this paragraph:
Every morning the town shudders with passing carts. They come from all over, loaded down with saltpeter, with ears of corn, with hay. Their wheels creak, making the windows rattle, waking everyone. At that same hour the ovens open and everything smells of freshly baked bread. Suddenly, the sky thunders. Rain falls. Perhaps spring is on its way. When you're there you'll get used to all the "suddenlies," my son.
What at first promised scope and bounty closes in around me and I feel overwhelmed completely.
The first thing to note plainly here is that Juan Rulfo is Mexican and so this novel is full of jokes about the dead. (The living dead no less.) Whilst I tend to approach the living dead with reverence and fear, in this novel characters are constantly making jokes about the dead behind their backs and bullying them for walking in circles and being clammy and difficult—basically it’s a kind of a ghost awareness program this book... like did you know most ghosts don’t even realise they're dead?
Whilst making some progress I find myself looking up at the tube map way too often to make sense.
I had judged from the slim size of this book that I’d be able to finish it quickly and return it back to Stephen in a few hours time but now I suspect that’s not possible.
I’m really struggling here.
Can’t get past one paragraph at a time.
I turn to the Foreword written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He’s recounting the first time he read PEDRO PARAMO in 1950s Mexico as this night where he barely slept for sheer excess of re-and re-reading it... (to be gushed over like this by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is an orgasm to last a life time…) Not sharing sentiments with GGM is one thing but what about the well-read homeless man? What does Stephen share with GGM that I don't? I close the book again and read the back in sustained desperation…
This novel was selected as one of a hundred core works of world literary heritage in 2002 survey of writers by the Nobel Institute.
Now I want to throw PEDRO PARAMO across this semi-crowded train. It is the object (proof) of my own stupidity. Of course, the man begging in the underground is smarter than me—and that’s the real problem. I can handle the Noble Institute towering above me but not him. Yes it’s his relationship with this novel that I’m so profoundly jealous of. I can still see him waving the book in front of me like a window-wiper from hell: find of the year, find of the year, find of the year, find of the year…
The novels I normally enjoy are basket cases carrying me down narrative streams—but PEDRO PARAMO is more like a cage or a maze and it’s making me feel lost, perpetually…
So I decide to head back into town. Must find Stephen. Must find out whyhowwhat this is, his “find of the year”.
But when I resurface at Piccadilly Circus again he’s nowhere to be found. Guess I’m stuck with his copy of PEDRO PARAMO forever now. Stuck in this perpetual nowhere.
NEXT…