The Iliac Crest Read online

  Published in 2017 by the Feminist Press

  at the City University of New York

  The Graduate Center

  365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406

  New York, NY 10016

  feministpress.org

  First Feminist Press edition 2017

  Copyright © 2002 by Cristina Rivera Garza

  Translation copyright © 2017 by Sarah Booker

  Afterword copyright © 2017 by Elena Poniatowska

  First published in Spanish as La cresta de Ilión in 2002 by Tusquets Editores.

  All rights reserved.

  This book was made possible thanks to a grant from New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First printing October 2017

  Cover and text design by Suki Boynton

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Rivera Garza, Cristina, 1964- author. | Booker, Sarah, translator. | Poniatowska, Elena, writer of afterword.

  Title: The Iliac Crest / by Cristina Rivera Garza; translated from the Spanish by Sarah Booker; afterword by Elena Poniatowska.

  Other titles: Cresta de Ilión. English

  Description: First Feminist Press edition. | New York, NY: The Feminist Press at City University of New York, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017015426 (print) | LCCN 2017027002 (ebook) | ISBN 9781936932061 (E-book)

  Subjects: LCSH: Identity (Psychology)--Fiction. | Psychological fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Romance / Gothic. | FICTION / Contemporary Women. | FICTION / Literary.

  Classification: LCC PQ7298.28.I8982 (ebook) | LCC PQ7298.28.I8982 C7413 2017 (print) | DDC 863/.64--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017015426

  For lrg

  The textual intention presupposes readers who know the language conspiracy in operation. The mark is not in-itself but in-relation-to-other-marks. The mark seeks the seeker of the system behind the events. The mark inscribes the i which is the her in the it which meaning moves through.

  —STEVE McCAFFERY, Panopticon

  A Note from the Author

  I have lived between Mexico and the United States for most of my life, countries characterized by rigid gender hierarchies and femicides along post-NAFTA borders. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why I took to writing a novel delving into the fluid nature of gender dis/identifications. I chose writings by Amparo Dávila, a marginalized Mexican woman writer of the so-called Midcentury Generation, to be the center of the novel’s enigma, set in a time in which disappearance has become a plague.

  Borders are a subtle but pervasive force in this book. I was born on the eastern tip of the US-Mexico border and lived between San Diego (California) and Tijuana (Baja California) when I wrote The Iliac Crest. There are questions you cannot escape when approaching immigration: Who are you? Where do you come from? Anything to declare? Awareness of geopolitical borders soon leads to questions about the many lines we cross—or don’t, or aren’t allowed to—as we go about our daily lives. Our bodies are keys that open only certain doors. Our bodies speak indeed, and our bones are our ultimate testimony. Will we be betrayed by our bones?

  While women’s voices throughout the world continue to be silenced and those in power still argue for the irrelevance of gender equality, characters in this book understand that gender—and what is done in the name of gender—can be lethal. When disappearing becomes an epidemic, especially among women, this book reminds readers that there is always a trace left: a manuscript, a footprint, a dent, an echo worthy of our full attention and our inquiries. When women disappear from our factories and our history—from our lives—we have to reexamine what is normal. Reality may have become inexplicable or impenetrable, and therefore maddening, but questioning such circumstances lies at the core of this novel.

  —CRISTINA RIVERA GARZA

  Houston, Texas, 2017

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  AFTERWORD

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO BY FEMINIST PRESS

  ABOUT FEMINIST PRESS

  Initial invitation:

  “But what are those books doing in the pool?” I asked, surprised. “Won’t they get wet?”

  “Nothing will happen to them. Water is their element and they’ll stay there for a long time, until someone comes along who deserves them, or who dares to rescue them.”

  “Why don’t you fish one out for me?”

  “Why don’t you go get it yourself?” he said, looking at me with a mocking gaze I found impossible to bear.

  “Why not?” I answered, and I dove into the pool.

  —AMPARO DÁVILA

  NOW, AFTER SO MUCH TIME HAS PASSED, I AM STILL DWELLING on it, incredulous. How is it possible that someone like me allowed an unknown woman into my house on a stormy night?

  I hesitated before opening the door. For a long time, I debated between closing the book I was reading or staying seated in my chair, in front of the roaring fire, as if nothing had happened. In the end, her insistence won me over. I opened the door. I looked at her. And I let her in.

  The climate, certainly, had worsened quite quickly in those days. All of a sudden, without warning, autumn moved across the coast as if it were at home here. The elongated and meager lights were there in the morning, as were the temperate winds, and the overcast skies in the evening. And then winter arrived. And the rains. You get used to everything, it’s true, but the winter rain—gray, interminable, dull—is a tough pill to swallow. It’s the type of thing that inevitably forces you to hunker down in the house, in front of the fireplace, suffering from boredom. Perhaps that’s why I opened the door and let her in: boredom.

  But I would be deceiving myself, and I would be deceiving you, surely, if I only mentioned the tiring prolonged storm that accompanied her appearance. I remember, above all, her eyes. Stars suspended in a devastating catlike face. Her eyes were enormous, so vast that they caused the world to expand around them, as if they were mirrors. I was soon able to confirm that initial impression: rooms grew under her gaze, hallways stretched out, closets became infinite horizons, the narrow entry hall, oddly reluctant at first, completely opened up. And that was, I would like to believe, the second reason I let her in: the expansive power of her gaze.

  If I stopped here, I would still be lying. In reality, amid the winter storm, surrounded by the open space her eyes had created, what really captured my attention was her right hip bone, which, because of the way she was leaning against the doorframe and the weight of the water over her skirt’s faded flowers, could be glimpsed just below the unfinished hem of her T-shirt and just above the elastic of her waistband. It took me a long time to remember the specific name for that bone, but, without a doubt, the search began at that moment. I wanted her. Men, I am sure, will understand me without needing any further explanation. To women, I will tell you that this happens frequently and with no fixed pattern. I will also warn you that this cannot be produced artificially: we, just as much as you, are disarmed when it occurs. I would venture to argue, in fact, that it can only happen if both of us are disarmed, but, as with many other things, I could be wrong. I wanted her, I was saying. Immediately. There was the characteristic throb in my lo
wer belly, in case I had dared doubt it. And there was, above all else, my imagination. I imagined her eating blackberries—her lips full and her fingertips stained crimson. I imagined her slowly walking up the stairs, turning her head just enough to see her own elongated shadow. I imagined her watching the sea through the picture windows, absorbed and solitary like a mast. I imagined her leaning back on her elbows on the right side of my bed. I imagined her words, her silences, her way of pursing her lips, her smiles, her laughter. When I remembered that she was right in front of me, whole and wet, shaking in the cold, I already knew everything about her. And I suppose this was the third reason I opened the door and, without completely letting go of the doorknob, invited her in.

  “I am Amparo Dávila,” she murmured with her gaze glued to the windows, just as I had imagined moments before. She moved toward them without another word. She placed her right hand between her forehead and the glass and, when she finally discerned the outline of the ocean, let out a heavy sigh. She seemed to have been relieved of a substantial burden, as if she had found what she had been searching for.

  I WOULD’VE LIKED FOR THE WHOLE THING TO HAVE HAPPENED like this, but that’s not how it went. It’s true that she arrived one stormy night, interrupting my reading and rest. It’s true, too, that I opened the door and that, upon entering, she moved toward the window overlooking the sea. And she said her name. And I heard its echo. But when I noticed her hip bone—the one peeking out from under the unfinished hem of her T-shirt and just above the elastic of her flowered skirt, the name of which I could not recall but whose search I undertook immediately—I did not feel desire, but fear.

  I suppose this is something that men will understand and that I don’t need to expand upon. To the women, I’ll just say that this happens more often than you might think: fear. You provoke fear. Sometimes we confuse this collapse, this immobility, this disarticulation, with desire. But underneath it all—among the roots through which water and oxygen filter, in the most fundamental substrata of being—we are always prepared for the appearance of fear. We lie in wait for it. We invoke and reject it with equal stubbornness, with incomparable conviction. And we give it names and, with them, put implausible stories into motion. We say, for example, that when I met Amparo Dávila, I felt desire. And we say with utmost certainty that this is a lie. But we say it anyway, so as to save ourselves from shame and humiliation. And we reaffirm it later as if it had to do with the most urgent of defense strategies against how, at the end of the day, we feel useless and defeated before we even begin. But we need at least a couple of minutes, a breath, a parenthesis, to put the pieces back together, the secret machinery, the battle plan, the stratagem. We hope that the woman believes it and that, upon doing so, leaves, satisfied, going anywhere else with her own horror in tow.

  That is what I wanted from Amparo Dávila that winter night. And that was the only thing she denied me.

  It was obvious she was aware of the horror she caused. There was something about the way she slid toward the window that immediately indicated such a conviction. It was clear she understood the ripple effect she created around her. She knew, I mean, that I was uncomfortable and that my discomfort would not dissipate with time. But I did nothing to fix it. The woman showed no pity and didn’t allow me to utter the word desire, or any of its more common synonyms, nor did she even grant me the breath needed to assert such a desire before her. She directed no seductive glances my way, nor did she act with the fragility of a girl in search of “comfort.” She asked me no personal questions. She gave me no information. Perhaps, if I had not been so terrified, I could have opened that door again and showed her through it. But here is my confession, with all of its vowels and consonants: I was afraid of her. I will repeat it. I will reiterate it. When I finally knew without a doubt that this was the case, I saw a pod of pelicans fly by the window. Their flight filled me with uncertainty. Where could they be going at this time of night in the storm? Why were they flying together? What were they fleeing?

  “I didn’t come here by chance,” she murmured, not looking at me, her hand still pressed against the window. “I know you from before.”

  When she turned to look at me, the space around my body expanded again. I was almost deaf from being so alone. I was lost.

  “I know you from when you were a tree,” she said. “From those times.”

  I AM A MAN WHO IS FREQUENTLY MISUNDERSTOOD. I SUPPOSE this could be attributed to my verbal disorder: the almost pathological way I forget to mention something essential at the beginning of my stories. I often narrate while assuming my interlocutor knows something that I eventually realize he does not understand at all. I’ve yet to mention, for example, that on that stormy night I was waiting for another woman. And that the anticipation, my nervousness, was the real reason I reluctantly left my book on the table, stood up, and moved toward the door. I forgot to mention that the surprise of encountering an unexpected face was such that it impeded me from any sort of normal rationale. Without this explanation, you might believe that I was bored, but at the same time, and precisely because of this, ready for something new. In reality, yes, I was bored, but by life in general and by winter in particular. I was really only prepared to welcome, and this with utmost unease, the Betrayed.

  I will avoid stating her name out of consideration—out of chivalry. I will avoid it, too, because our history surely fills her with shame. My decision to call her the Betrayed is not an effort at ridicule or indifference. I do it because this is an epithet that she herself has used to refer to her relationship with me. I am, of course, the Traitor.

  That is what we were going to talk about that night. That is why we had planned to meet: we were going to talk about the past, to look back on everything, and then, finally, we would end by accepting that life had led us down different paths. The usual. What couples go through when they decide to leave it all behind for good.

  I suppose we were in pursuit of a reconciliation with the universe, at an age when it’s certain the universe, as much as reconciliation, will never amount to anything more than empty ambitions, virtual maps, animals gone extinct. Dreams. But we were both stubborn. We both had that absurd, almost religious need to transcend our own situation. Perhaps we were in search of forgiveness. The Betrayed, I knew, would not grant it, and for that reason neither would I. Our reunion was destined to fail, but even knowing this we insisted on meeting. The agitation with which I awaited her that stormy night was due, above all, to this crushing feeling of resignation. But when she finally arrived two hours later than the agreed-upon time, when she knocked on the door and stepped across the threshold with two leather suitcases and her wet gabardine coat, the Betrayed fainted on the spot. She hadn’t even realized that another woman had beaten her there. Amparo Dávila helped me carry her to a room upstairs, and, once we laid the Betrayed on the bed, she took it upon herself to undress her, while I avoided gazing again upon the body I had once seen something in, something I no longer remembered.

  “She has a fever,” she said without needing to use a thermometer. “We’ll give her penicillin.”

  “But you don’t even know what she has!” In response, the Wet Girl went into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet as if she were in her own house, as if she, not I, specialized in the illnesses of the human body.

  “There isn’t any penicillin,” I informed her in my usual calm manner.

  “It must be the epidemic,” she said as she placed a cold compress on the patient’s forehead.

  The Betrayed fluttered her eyelids and mumbled a few words before falling into a deep sleep. Amparo Dávila took her pulse. She looked at her with a mixture of sweetness and disgust.

  “Get away from her,” I said from the doorframe. “She could infect you.”

  She smiled, arched her right eyebrow. She slowly and pitilessly looked me up and down. Then she went downstairs and came back up with the leather suitcases. She opened them, carefully took out the Betrayed’s clothing, making sure n
ot to unfold anything, and placed each item in the dresser drawer without turning to look at me.

  “Her convalescence will be long,” she assured me when she finished. “If she survives.”

  THREE DAYS AFTER HER ARRIVAL, AMPARO HAD ALREADY DEVELOPED a routine that we shared and respected equally. So placid, so natural, that anyone not familiar with us might have believed we were happily married. At first glance, no one would have suspected that I was just playing along, that my fear hadn’t subsided in the least. Quite the opposite: it kept growing.

  Amparo would wake up early, bathe, and, with her hair still wet, go downstairs to the kitchen to make coffee for me and tea for the Betrayed. When she returned upstairs to attend her patient, I’d go down to the dining room to find the newspaper next to the orange juice and an empty mug, which I’d calmly fill while trying to detect the morning murmur of the sea. Amparo would let me begin the day alone, which is the only way a day can begin, but she would appear with a notebook and pencil just as I finished reading the paper. Then she would mutter something consistently insipid about the Betrayed’s health and, with nothing more, would hunch over her notebook and begin to write.

  “What are you writing about?” I asked her the first morning, glancing at the open notebook and thinking that, upon answering me, she would say that they were personal letters, things of little importance.

  “My disappearance,” she said quietly but firmly, and then turned to look at the sun’s reflection on the sea outside. Then, without another word, she went back to concentrating on the pages of her notebook.

  Her response sounded absurd to me, of course, but also plausible. And it helped explain everything. Only a disappeared person could have materialized on the coast as she had. If she had been Someone, for example, they would have arrested her at the entrance of the seaside gated community where the hospital I worked for had assigned me a large, austere house on the water. They would have already made phone calls for Someone. Someone with information and a history would have asked me if she could stay in my house, and would have informed me, at least, of the number of days and the conditions of her stay. Only a disappeared person like Amparo, I suddenly understood, could act as if she didn’t really exist because—and this is where the pieces came together—she really didn’t exist. The woman, now there was no doubt, was totally aware of her condition, to the extent that her conduct, her way of walking and seeing, of speaking and even falling silent, corresponded to rules that were completely foreign to me. She did not understand, for example, the order of things in the relationship between cause and effect. Not only did she ignore the fact that actions, all actions, have consequences, but also that consequences originate, and do not result, in causes. She seemed not to understand that you must first know the host in order to visit his house. Amparo, supported by the singular logic of the disappeared, acted in direct opposition: she arrived to visit the host with the objective of getting to know him. That was what she had told me that first night, just after saying good night to the Betrayed with a kiss on her forehead and closing the door to what was now her bedroom.