Evil Pact

In some respects, Pedra Canga is about people's
relationship to an oppressive force, and how
they respond to its weakening and cessation.

Bondo Wyszpolski

Pedra Canga, by Tereza Albues, trans. by Clifford E. Landers (Green Integer 32, 153 pp., $12.95 paper)

We fold back the first page and begin reading: "On the night Mr. V. lay dying, a storm unlike any ever seen in these parts flattened trees, houses, chicken coups, pigsties, and lampposts." We know where we are right away. We're at the intersection of Faulkner Drive and García Márquez Avenue, in one of those backwater towns that Jorge Amado drew so well in books like Showdown and The Violent Land.

First published in Brazil in 1987, Pedra Canga is just what we'd expect from a Latin American novel with roots in magic realism. Tereza Albues approaches storytelling in a way that recalls Isabel Allende, Laura Esquivel, and Nélida Piñon, among others. And so one slips into her book fairly easily.

We find ourselves in a remote village in Western Brazil, close to the Bolivian border. Fueled by rum and superstition, plus lots of local gossip, the town is populated by a colorful cast that ranges from the psychically-gifted Marcola to the narrator's rambunctious grandfather, Zé Garbas. The latter is a poet and guitarist, and also a heavy drinker.

At the center of the story is the two-story colonial mansion that sits in the middle of the Mangueiral estate, walled in and guarded by fierce dogs. Verônico Vergares has lived there, in virtual and now mythic isolation, with his wife and two servants, Nivalda and Nastácio. Waiting in the wings, there seems to be a compelling tale about Nastácio, but it never takes off. Nivalda, at least, runs away and finds refuge in the local bordellos. She tells Genu, the owner, that: "My master is dying and the house's been taken over by horrible people performing blood rituals. They tried to kill me but I got away."

While the estate has always been off-limits to the locals, 12-year-old Zigmundo and his dozen or so fellow street urchins periodically hop over the walls to steal mangoes and pitombas. Despite their stealth, it seems they're always spotted and one or two will end up with salt pellets in their behinds.

Things change, however, and one day there's no resistance. No barking dogs, no shots in the butt. Gradually, the townsfolk become emboldened and the grounds are invaded. Strange, ant-like people appear and begin carting off everything that isn't nailed down, and eventually everything that is. But what really befell the Vergares? Did they simply vanish without a trace?

In some respects, Pedra Canga is about people's relationship to an oppressive force, and how they respond to its weakening and cessation. The Vergares seem to have had some pact with evil, maybe with the Devil himself, although it's hard to be sure because many of the characters are unreliable and the magic realism that pervades the story actually dilutes the impact it makes. Were the Vergares as bad to the bone as we're led to believe, or are they symbolic of soulless corporations that maximize profits at the expense of their workers? It's even possible that Pedra Canga is a parable of sorts about Brazil's own dictatorship, which was still fresh in everyone's mind when Albues wrote her novel. It's hard to be sure.

Pedra Canga is diverting and engrossing, much like an afternoon barbecue with friends. It's well written, and Clifford Landers has supplied a smooth translation, but whereas some stories linger for days in the imagination this one does not. We close the covers, and the characters fall silent.
 

Pedra Canga: an excerpt: "Turning on the flashlight, I descended the narrow steps and began to inspect the place. It was an immense room with damp stone walls that smelled of mold. Rats, bats, and cockroaches roamed at will. There was no furniture. In the middle was an enormous slab, thick and rectangular. On the floor, various objects: an ax, a large knife, a hammer, nails, an old trunk, masks, coils of rope. Examining them up close, I remembered with horror the ceremonies described in the diary and, perhaps from being in the place where they had been held, I visualized the restoration of the past in all its force. I sensed the presence of people gathering to prepare the ritual, chants, shouts, and a constant murmur that seemed to come from the depths of the earth. Terrified, I saw rise from the back of the room a shape in a red tunic that came slowly toward me, holding a large razor-sharp dagger. It looked like a peccary, but its head was human. It guffawed, howled, and bellowed: water, water, water. I tried to flee, but my feet seemed nailed to the ground and I had no control over the rest of my body. I heard a buzzing in my ears and suddenly felt so weak that I nearly fainted. Then I heard noises on the steps. I focused the light in that direction and saw Marcola, radiant and dressed in white, with necklaces of the god Oxóssi around her throat. In a firm voice she ordered me to get up and follow her at once. To this day I don't know how I managed to carry out her order to the letter… I was still trembling when I got home. Since the light was on in my mother's bedroom, I went to see if she needed anything. I found her sitting in a rocking chair beside the bed, where Marcola lay in a deep sleep… I asked if Marcola had left the house in the last few hours and she thought the question was odd… How could a person in Marcola's condition get up and go walking around at night? She… could guarantee that at no moment had Marcola set foot outside."

Bilingual Verse

The publishers inform that Sky-Eclipse "is centered
on the play of sound and syntax, of rhyme
and intense rhythmic shifts."

Bondo Wyszpolski

Sky-Eclipse, by Régis Bonvicino, various translators (Green Integer 44, 125 pp., $9.95 paper)

Brazilian poets are not well known in America, with the possible exception of Carlos Drummond de Andrade and João Cabral de Melo Neto, two men worth reading despite the difficulties of achieving an accurate translation (check out, however, The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry).

The back cover of Sky-Eclipse informs us that "[Régis] Bonvicino's work is centered on the play of sound and syntax, of rhyme and intense rhythmic shifts," and to back up this assertion the editors have supplied the reader with a bilingual edition so that we may judge for ourselves.

Hailing from urban São Paulo, Bonvicino has ten books of poetry to his credit, and the work presented here is drawn from three earlier collections, Ossos de Borboleta (Butterfly Bones), Céu-eclipse (Sky-Eclipse), and Outros Poemas (Other Poems). Twelve translators are credited, including poets Michael Palmer and Robert Creeley.

The poems are short and impressionistic, as if Bonvicino seeks to capture the moment. Two examples will suffice, the first translated by Dana Stevens, the second by John Milton.

Among

Among motors
and noises
(dry
chirp

and dissonant
splinter)
the bird's flight
creates

a new hypothesis
of space

Where

Where I write
there's the noise
of the city garbage after
it's collected
being ground

there's a lamp
a chest of drawers
with a mirror
and a bed
unmade

autumn is near
the window closed

a sudden fatigue
takes charge of the words.

Sky-Eclipse and Pedra Canga are the first two Brazilian works published by Green Integer. The publishing house, based in Los Angeles (and Copenhagen), has issued books by an internationally-known array of prose stylists and poets, including James Joyce, Paul Celan, Knut Hamsun, Robbert Bresson, and Djuna Barnes.

Bondo Wyszpolski also heads up the arts and entertainment section of the Easy Reader, a weekly newspaper based in the South Bay of southern California. He can be reached at bwyszpolski@earthlink.net  

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