Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrerra

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

This short novella translated from the Spanish is a rather unusual experience. On its surface, it is the story of a young woman, Makina, who travels from her village in rural Mexico, crosses the border into the United States, and seeks out her missing brother. 

 

But there is a lot more to it than that. The book is full of imagery and metaphor, with obvious parallels to Greek mythology concerning the underworld - the scene involving Charon and the Styx is particularly obvious, as are a few references to Inferno. According to the translator, Lisa Dillman, there are also parallels with The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I haven’t read that one, so I will have to take her word for it. 

 

The title itself also gives away another layer: this is about the end of the world, or, perhaps not so much the end of the world, but of the worlds of its characters, who cross over into another place, another reality, much like the journeys of the heroes of old past that river of no return. 

 

The ending is an enigma: what really happens? We never do find out, but are left with the impression that Makina will now be starting a new life, with a new name and identity. 

 

Another layer is the casual exploration of the experience of being an immigrant - an “other” - in an increasingly xenophobic United States, as well as the experience of being a woman in a misogynistic and casually violent society - and by that I really mean two societies, Mexican and American, both of which have significant problems in their treatment of women. 

 

Makina is also an unexpected protagonist. She is young, reasonably attractive, but far from naive. She works the telephone switchboard in the local town, speaks English, Spanish, and the liminal language we might call Spanglish fluently. She is on terms of some familiarity with the local crime bosses; even able to call in favors. She is sexually experienced and frank about it. 

 

Oh, and when a young man tries to grope her on the bus, she breaks his finger. That’s only one of the scenes in the book where she defies expectations and puts herself in the middle of the action, not as a victim, but in aggressive defense of herself and others. 

 

My copy of the book included a note from the translator at the end, which was quite enlightening. Apparently the original book has an unusual style, including neologisms and verbing of nouns and other experimental writing. Dillman tried to preserve some of this feel, while acknowledging that translation was impossible in some cases due to cultural references which were untranslatable. I think overall, she did an excellent job - she captures a certain disorientation and unreality quite well. 

 

For all of these reasons, I think Signs Preceding the End of the World is a book you don’t so much read as experience. If possible, read it in a single sitting (it’s short enough), and let the narrative wash over you and see what feelings remain as the tide recedes. 

 

There are a few passages that stood out to me, and I figure they can at least tease the book, which cannot be captured in a review like this. 

 

Makina agrees to carry two messages to her brother: one from their mother, and one from the mob bosses. She knows the content only of the first. But, just like with her job at the switchboard, she knows she isn’t a gatekeeper.

 

You don’t lift other people’s petticoats…

You don’t stop to wonder about other people’s business…

You don’t decide which messages to deliver and which to let rot…

You are the door, not the one who walks through it.

 

There is this description of Mexico City and the central task of any migrant: don’t get lost.

 

Every time she came to the Big Chilango she trod softly, because that was not the place she wanted to leave her mark, and she told herself repeatedly that she couldn’t get lost, and by get lost she meant not a detour or a sidetrack but lost for real, lost forever in the hills of hills cementing the horizon; or lost in the awe of all the living flesh that had built and paid for palaces.

 

Near the end, Makina finds herself witnessing a group of migrants being threatened by cops. The language barrier and their fear prevents them from giving a coherent answer. When the most bullying of the cops demands a migrant write a poem, since he is clutching a book of poetry, she steps in, and writes the poem instead. In part, it reads as follows:

 

We are to blame for this destruction, we who don’t speak your tongue and don’t know how to keep quiet either. We who didn’t come by boat, who dirty up your doorsteps with our dust, who break your barbed wire. We who came to take your jobs, who dream of wiping your shit, who long to work all hours. We who fill your shiny clean streets with the smell of food, who brought you violence you’d never known, who deliver your dope, who deserve to be chained by neck and feet. We who are happy to die for you, what else could we do? We, the ones who are waiting for who knows what. We, the dark, the short, the greasy, the shifty, the fat, the anemic. We the barbarians.

 

The best, though, is the extended musing on Spanglish and the liminal space between formal languages. I grew up in a place where Spanglish was in common use - and also Taglish and other border languages. These are not a corruption or a mere hybrid, but a new species that arises in the border space - the puns are not fully of either nor a mere combination, but the genesis of a new language. (That’s actually how real languages arose within families and between them too, historically speaking.)

 

To understand this passage, “homegrown” and “latin” refers to Mexican Spanish, and “anglo” is American English. If you know, you know. Also, use of lowercase is in the original.

 

They are homegrown and they are anglo and both things with rabid intensity; with restrained fervor they can be the meekest and at the same time the most querulous of citizens, albeit grumbling under their breath. Their gestures and tastes reveal both ancient memory and the wonderment of a new people. And then they speak. They speak an intermediary tongue that Makina instantly warms to because it’s like her: malleable, erasable, permeable; a hinge pivoting between two like but distant souls, and then two more, and then two more, never exactly the same ones; something that serves as a link. 

More than the midpoint between homegrown and anglo their tongue is a nebulous territory between what is dying out and what is not yet born. But not a hecatomb. Makina senses in their tongue not a sudden absence but a shrewd metamorphosis, a self-defensive shift. They might be talking in perfect latin tongue and without warning begin to talk in perfect anglo tongue and keep it up like that, alternating between a thing that believes itself to be perfect, morphing back and forth between two beasts until out of carelessness or clear intent they suddenly stop switching tongues and start speaking that other one. In it brims nostalgia for the land they left or never knew when they use the words with which they name objects; while actions are alluded to with an anglo verb conjugated latin-style, pinning on a sonorous tail from back there.

 

Not only is that an apt description, the language the author uses is gorgeous, a real masterpiece. There is a lot more of this evocative writing in the book, and it feels fresh and unexpected throughout. 

 

If you are looking for an interesting book in translation, modern and surprising, well written and timely, but not too long or difficult, this is a good one. It is also deeper the more closely you examine it, which is something I appreciate in a book. Like most books in translation, this one is not aimed at a white, middle class, middle aged American audience, which means the perspective will be different – and that is a very good thing indeed.