It would be a slight understatement to say that The Feast of the Goat has been the least successful book of my Spanish-language literature adventure so far. However, I'm nothing if not fair, so I decided that I needed to give Mario Vargas Llosa a second try, a chance to make amends - and I even gambled on one of his longer works this time around. Let's see if it was a risk worth taking...
*****
Conversation in the Cathedral (translated by Gregory Rabassa) has absolutely nothing to do with big churches. The cathedral of the title is a seedy bar, where two of the main characters, Santiago and Ambrosio, go to catch up after a chance meeting. The two men have a shared history, but they are very different people - as will become evident over the next six-hundred pages.
Santiago is the son of a rich socialite family, but he has chosen the black-sheep path and works as a reporter for a tabloid newspaper, turning his back on his family and their wealth. Ambrosio is a hulking black worker, formerly the chauffeur to Santiago's father, Don Fermín, and he has fallen on hard times. As the two talk about what has happened in the years since they last met, the reader is treated to a spell-binding trip thorugh Peruvian history and introduced to a whole host of characters, both fictional and real. It's a challenging book, and the two drinkers aren't the only ones with a headache by the time we get to the last page...
Where The Feast of the Goat left me cold, Conversation in the Cathedral had me coming back for more every night. It's a novel which is far more interesting, stylistically more inventive, and much more intricate. The first chapter detailing the events of the meeting and the conversation is fairly normal, but from chapter two the book bursts into life. Conversations erupt without warning, several at once, intermingled, confusing:
"To work, son," Ambrosio says. I mean, to look for work."
"Are you serious or joking?" the Lieutenant asked.
"Did my old man know you were there?" Santiago asks.
"I don't like to joke, " Bermúdez said. "I always speak seriously."
p.46 (Harper Perennial, 2005)
By the way - Ambrosio is talking to Santiago, and the Lieutenant is talking to Bermúdez...
It gets even more complicated later when multiple conversations are taking place (from different times), and some of the speakers are present in two or three of them. You really need to be on your toes at times in this book... Which is not to say that it's all mind-bending. The narrative flows nicely, and the conversations usually hit the right balance between mundane and witty:
"Why were you so bitter, then?" Ambrosio asks. "Was it because of the girl?"
"I never saw her alone," Santiago says. "I wasn't bitter; a little worm in my stomach sometimes, nothing else."
"You wanted to make love to her and you couldn't with the other one there," Ambrosio says. "I know what it's like to be close to the woman you love and not be able to do anything."
"Did that happen to you with Amalia?" Santiago asks.
"I saw a movie about it once," Ambrosio says. (p.92)
Of course, there's more to that short exchange than meets the eye...
The book is divided into four parts, and each looks at a different period of time (even if the chapters tend to jump backwards and forwards in time). Each introduces new characters, many of whom then fade into the background. After 100 pages, we are obsessed with Santiago's university time and his communist leanings, eager to learn more about his friends Aída and Jacobo - by the end of the book, they've been forgotten (like mnay good university friends...).
One of the main characters is Cayo Bermúdez, a non-descript, half-breed merchant plucked from obscurity, who becomes one of the most powerful and feared men in the country in the 1950s. Having eclipsed the General who recommended him to the President, he goes about consolidating the regime's grip on power while amassing a fortune, keeping a mistress and ruthlessly crushing all attempts at insurrection. Oh, and did I mention that Ambrosio is his chauffeur too?
In fact, while the book begins with Santiago, it is actually Ambrosio who is the star attraction. His connection with the rich, famous and morally questionable allows the reader to taste what life was like in Peru in the 1950s, a story fascinating enough to keep the reader's attention. And when the pace does flag a little (inevitable in such a long book), and the reader is beginning to wonder what else might happen, Vargas Llosa throws in a murder, one he has already hinted at. Suddenly, events take a new turn, and some surprising revelations make us see certain characters in a new light...
Conversation in the Cathedral is an excellent novel, and one which has (mostly) restored Vargas Llosa in my eyes. Like The Feast of the Goat, it's a book concerned with history and politics, but it does so in a much more elegant and interesting manner. Rabassa's translation is excellently unnoticeable (if you think that's a good thing!), allowing the reader to immerse themself in the story without stumbling across clumsy expressions. While I don't think the writer manages to hold the tension right up to the end (I thought it was just that little bit too long towards the finish), he still does a good job of making the reader want to prolong their stay in the semi-fictional world he creates.
So Vargas Llosa has managed to redeem himself, and my Spanish-Literature odyssey is back on track - although it's actually nearing its end. In fact, I have just one more of my library treats to get through before I can sit back and relax. Which is probably a good job - I have a pile of ARCs that could really do with some attention...
I'm not a big believer in coincidences, but sometimes it's hard not to believe that the universe is trying to tell you something. On the same day I was to start my latest venture into Spanish-language literature, several sources reported that the book had been voted best Spanish novel of this century so far. I was a little confused by the news, as I was fairly certain that Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa was actually Peruvian... As it turns out, he has Spanish citizenship, so he's eligible to be on that list - but does the book deserve it? Let's find out...
*****
The Feast of the Goat (translated by Edith Grossman) is a political thriller set in the Dominican Republic, one which looks at the end of the country's Trujillo dictatorship in May 1961. The novel starts decades after though, when Urania Cabral, a New York lawyer (and the daughter of a Trujillo supporter), returns to Santo Domingo after thirty-five years of self-imposed exile. She visits her father, paralysed by a stroke, and has dinner with relatives - but none of this is her real reason for returning to her home country after decades away.
Meanwhile, back in 1961, the seventy-year-old dictator is getting ready for the day, unaware that, in a third strand of the story, a small group of men is getting ready to put an end to both the regime and his life. Over 400 pages, and three discrete strands, the reader will find out exactly what happened on the fateful day, and what the consequences were for the country. We might also find out what made Urania stay in the US for so long...
The Feast of the Goat, despite its multiple strands, is a fairly straight-forward piece of historical fiction, with Trujillo, the great dictator, at the heart of the story. Despite his age, he is still a formidable figure; however, sanctions and pressure from without (America) and within (the Catholic church) means that he has to be on his guard. Initially, he comes across as a stereotypical sociopathic despot, one who has a whole country cowering. The more we learn though, the more subtle his depiction becomes. While we could never condone his behaviour, Vargas Llosa helps us to understand what makes him tick.
The same can't be said for his family. His two sons are blood-thirsty playboys, swanning around the world playing polo and sleeping with any woman they deem desirable enough, and his wife cares only for money (and revenge for any perceived slights). The writer is careful to provide us with details of the excesses the ruling family allow themselves:
"The crowning events of the commemoration were the promotion of Ramfis to the rank of lieutenant general, for outstanding service to the nation, and the enthroning of Her Gracious Majesty Angelita I, Queen of the Fair, who arrived by boat, announced by all the sirens in the navy and all the bells in all the churches of the capital, wearing her crown of precious jewels and her delicate gown of tulle and lace created in Rome by the Fontana sisters, two celebrated modistes who used forty-five meters of Russian ermine to create the costume with a train three meters long and a robe that copied the one worn by Elizabeth II of England at her coronation."
p.98 (Faber and Faber, 2002)
It's little wonder that the Trujillos have enemies. When you enjoy yourselves at the country's expense, you're always likely to be heading for a fall.
That fall is closer than the dictator realises. A mixed bag of conspirators (some activists, some former supporters - one is even Trujillo's bodyguard) have decided that the time has come to redeem themselves and sanitise the land. In the words of Antonio Imbert, one of the conspirators:
"It had been this malaise of so many years' duration - thinking one thing and doing something that contradicted it every day - that led him, in the secret recesses of his mind, to condemn Trujillo to death, to convince himself that as long as Trujillo lived, he and many other Dominicans would be condemned to this awful queasy sickness of constantly having to lie to themselves and deceive everyone else, of having to be two people in one, a public lie and a private truth that could not be expressed." (p.141)
The group hopes to take out Trujillo surgically and usher in a new era of peace in the Dominican Republic. Sadly though, operations are rarely as clean and surgical as one would like...
While it's fairly easy for the reader to understand why Trujillo needs to be assassinated, the question of his popularity is not quite so clear. The writer gradually helps the reader catch up with the region's history, detailing the occupation by Haiti, the push for independence and Trujillo's defiance of invasions and sanctions alike. There's also the small matter of the Generalissimo's persona, as described by one of Trujillo's military commanders:
"He never allowed anyone to treat him with disrespect. But, like so many officers, so many Domincans, before Trujillo his valor and sense of honor disappeared, and he was overcome by a paralysis of his reason and his muscles, by servile obedience and reverence. He often had asked himself why the mere presence of the Chief - his high-pitched voice and the fixity of his gaze - annihilated him morally." (p.309)
We are witness to several examples of the effect the dictator's aura has on those around him - and with complete control of newspapers and radio stations, he has ample opportunity to show it to the rest of the nation as well.
Urania's story, of course, takes place long after the events of 1961, but her experience is somehow tied in with both of the other strands of the story. What made her leave the Dominican Republic? Did it have anything to do with her father's dismissal? What is her connection with Trujillo? While the answers to these questions are not really key to the main story, they do keep you guessing right to the end.
Overall, The Feast of the Goat is an interesting book, one which people fond of historical fiction will like. However, I had several issues with it, and I can't say that it lived up to the rest of my recent reading. The prose was fairly pedestrian, with none of the sparkle of Saramago, the languid skill of Marías, or the dry, Borgesian elegance. In particular, the first part was incredibly slow-paced, full of info dumping, tedious in parts. It's definitely not a bad read, but the best Spanish novel of last 12 years? Not in my book...
I'm sure I'll give Vargas Llosa another go at some point (he is a Nobel winner, after all), but in my opinion this was just an OK book. There's nothing wrong with that, I suppose. It's just that (as you can see from my May wrap-up post) I really don't do ordinary ;)
