Cristina Rivera Garza: Terrestrial

Cristina Rivera Garza's new title, Terrestre , could well be defined as a book of speculative chronicles or travel stories, in any case, of words in complete freedom , reads the back cover. Imaginative, with bold narrative structures , the author writes here about terrestrial journeys that take us to different places in Mexico and the world, and to different destinations of the body. On foot, by bus or train, the young protagonists of these stories advance in unison along unknown routes, inventing for themselves new ways of occupying denied and contested spaces . With authorization from Penguin Random House, we reproduce the first pages of this book as a preview.

V

We come from afar. We come from the books we carry under our arms. We come from the slogans chanted at the marches. We are a lot, and we will be more. We come from the imagination. Ardent, the imagination. Crippled, the imagination. We have listened attentively to the communists before resorting to the mountains. And to the socialists. And to the Trotskyists, who organize clandestine rallies on the rooftops of some social-interest buildings. We have repeated, as if we were an old Russian revolutionary with high blood pressure problems about to be assassinated in Mexico City: my faith in the communist future of humanity is no less ardent today, but firmer than in my youth. But only at the anarchist parties and the feminist dances can we move in our own way, without taking orders from others. We come from a lack of hope. We come from being fed up. And here we sit. We push open the wooden door and turn on the bare 30-watt spotlight and take our places on the armchairs we snatched from the dumpster. Here we sit and catch up on things. Don Martín got a job in construction. Felicia had to put her baby in a hammock attached to the roof to keep the rats from biting her cheeks at night. Concepción is pregnant again. Doña Marina has diabetes. Don Alberto has diabetes. Sonia has diabetes. There's no insulin. There's no insulin. There's no insulin. Francisco and Emilia finally became boyfriend and girlfriend. Carmela finally slapped her husband. And we smile. We smile reluctantly. We smile because we're together and because out there, in the murky afternoon air, that gray air like illuminated cement, the circumference of the moon can already be seen. Look, we say. There will be a full moon today. And we smile. And we remain silent. Sudden statues. Monuments of coal. It's going to be very cold soon, we finally say, regaining our speech and movement. We have a lot of things to do before the assembly.

We are in the city, and we are outside the city without ever having left it. We are under its sky. Here we roll up our sleeves and get to work. Some of us shuffle to the lot designated for the school and begin hauling bricks and mixing water with cement. Some of us head to the small house that serves as a clinic and set about organizing the medications alphabetically and by illness in small shoeboxes. Some of us bring brown bags full of seeds or cuttings for the garden team. Some of us go see Doña Camila to find out if she'll have time to continue the interview today, after the assembly, or tomorrow, whenever she can. But who would be interested in my life story, girl? Some of us seek out the representatives of the surveillance commission with the information we received upon arriving at the neighborhood: things are going to get horrendous today. Don't worry, they tell us, taking long drags on their cigarettes. They're trying to intimidate us. They are the scabs of the delegation, the henchmen of their institutional party. Besides, who can distinguish the color of ants at night? Some of us stop to watch the setting sun. Its dying rays struggle against the iridescent gray of the atmosphere only to become a dull glow that, after expanding uncontrollably, soon disappears. How colossal is the light when it's about to die. Some of us raise our heads and insistently wonder if anyone is watching us from up there. What are we, if we are anything, to those stars that obey their orbits for millions and millions of years without question?

What about the clouds, or the shooting star, or the comet that passes close to Earth every 75 years? What about the Moon, which, full of itself, swollen with itself, now spreads out entirely in the firmament, solitary and powerful, casting shadows with its light? We look like adults, but we're a bunch of teenagers wondering about their place in the universe. Go eat something before you go to the assembly, they remind us. Don't faint.

We come from the question. We come from the circumspection that provokes the question and unleashes curiosity. What were our feet ultimately made for? What else can be forged with the hands, with the skeleton, with the stomach? We come from afar, from the question, and we sit here. And together we eat. Here we savor some food: a banana, a piece of sweet bread, a cup of instant coffee. Here we choke sometimes and tell jokes to keep going. What do we pursue but tiredness? What but that excruciating exhaustion that befalls the body when lactic acid breaks down muscle fibers and breaks us into so many pieces? What but adrenaline, and then cortisol, that raise blood sugar levels and leave us prostrate in the vice of alarm, in its reflex? Here we come to wear ourselves out. Here we come to clarify things with our bodies.

What's the limit? How long can we hold out? We must give our energy as a gift.

You have to give time as a gift.

Here we love. On drizzly afternoons, as we watch the gentle fall of water through the hole that serves as a window in the tin wall, we grieve for the mosquitoes that, newborn, faint without having barely lived, defeated by drops that do nothing but slide over the backs of our hands. Here we stroke the dogs' backs and hug the rough trunks of the oak trees when no one can see us from afar. Here we gaze at each other with desire. And we lie with each other, testing greed, pleasure, and challenge. Some of us lay our heads on hard, moldy pillows and fear unwanted pregnancies. Some of us cower before the crushing onslaught of AIDS, not knowing quite what to do or what not to do. Some of us write long essays against penetration that will later be published in some anarchist magazine. Some of us talk until dawn.

We must give time as a gift. We are in the city, on the permanent shores of its body. We are on the shores and we walk. These are the outskirts. And we advance in the darkness, whispering. Sometimes we hold hands. Sometimes we stumble on stones and fall and get up again, covered in scrapes; sometimes we walk over streams of black water, and sometimes we stop because we can't go on. The air suddenly becomes exuberant, and we choke on oxygen. Are we doing well? we ask ourselves. Suddenly, the brilliance of the full moon hits us in the face. Whose does all this really belong to? Can anyone, with their five senses, claim ownership of the sun, its effervescent energy that creates worlds, galaxies, universes? Can anyone, seriously, in adherence to the truth, claim ownership of the common good that is the sky? Are we doing well? we ask again. Down below, in the valley where the city lies, there's a swarm of dragonflies disguised as electricity. We're doing well.

The assembly is a celebration of shadows and serenity, an opportunity to greet one another and catch up. Weren't you back in your homeland? I heard Chabelita already found a job. How's that leg? Look, I brought you the ointment for your ankles. First, you warm it a little between your hands and then rub it well into your skin, and that's it. Better let your daughter help you. Little by little, we take up our positions on this soccer field, under a battered shed lit by a few oil and kerosene lamps. Some of us reach for chairs. Some of us sit on stones, and some of us remain standing, lighting cigarettes, one after the other, without blinking. Some of us rub our hands together and then bring them to our mouths, as if the steam from inside our bodies could do something to combat the cold surrounding us. Some of us wear jackets and shawls, and some, most of us, wear heavy wool jorongos. Some of us take small sips of mezcal. The once lively conversations turn into murmurs, and the murmurs soon subside, fueling anticipation. Will they finally invade us tonight?

The commission representatives offer their reports in neutral voices: the procedures with the delegation remain the same. There's no end to the land regulations. But who needs permits to continue building, right? We keep insisting. There are a lot of us, and there will be more. More water trucks have been authorized for the neighborhood, but they'll only reach the vacant lot below the market. Get ready with your drums and buckets. The architecture department has already finished the latrines in the southern quadrant; those in the north are getting ready. An agreement has been reached with the garbage collectors. Participation in the surveillance is everyone's responsibility, don't forget. Each property is responsible for sending a representative to the patrols. We need at least four groups of six or seven people each night. You know, if you see anything strange, anything at all, rattle the rails as loudly as you can. We can't let them catch us off guard. They're saying on the news that we're hiding guerrillas from Central America here. Don't believe them. We're not guerrillas, we're paratroopers. Don't believe them. We're workers. We're unemployed. We're what industrial capitalism discards. Don't believe them. It's the pretext they need to destroy.

At some point in our lives, we will call all of this the popular urban movement. Direct action. Autonomy by other means. We will call the stories that women gradually unravel in long, nightly meetings, under the protection of a few candles, exhausted from their work and their troubles, examples of intuitive feminism. We will call the bartering that underpins their work, exchanging energy flows and expanding supportive practices that go beyond restrictive economics, cosmological solidarity. Being one with the elements. Solar politics.

But there are few names to describe violence. Violence is always violence. We wake up to the rumble of the rails and stand up immediately, dressed as we had slept. There have been mistakes before, and we hope, as we fasten our bootlaces, that this is a mistake in the now or the later. We hope it's a joke, even. But soon Felicia appears on the property, her ashen hair lit by the moonlight. Let them bite her, she says. Let them rush up and warn Jerónimo. They're almost there, she adds at the end, before running off and disappearing into the darkness. Instead of going down, joining the others, we climb the slope. We do it immediately too, without thinking. We walk uphill: we pant and puff, we snort and are about to vomit. But we keep going. We stumble and get up and keep going. Our lungs are about to burst. Our ankles. We don't have to knock on Jerónimo's door because he's already standing there, scanning the elements from the corner of his property. Felicia sent us, we tell him in low voices, trying to catch our breath. We're ready, he says in reply. Is it true he's smiling? But this isn't your doing, it's ours. That's what he says. That's what he assures us. From here, you hold on tight as you are and continue to the road. And from there, you continue as long as you have the strength. Don't look back.

We come from far away. We come from no such place. Some of us glance at each other out of the corner of our eyes, without fully taking our eyes off the television. The dawn news shows the proud faces of the police officers, the red-blue lights of their patrol cars behind their heads, and, higher up, the soft glow of a timid sun breaking through the skeins of smog. The end of an irregular settlement. A large quantity of weapons confiscated. Some of us drink cups of cold coffee and crack our knuckles. Some of us grit our teeth. The prisoners appear in another frame, their necks down and their gaze on the floor. Some of us stand up, unable to bear the weight of rage on our shoulders, and shout furiously, promising that this won't stay like this. Not like this. The bodies lying in pools of blood appear later. Camera two. Many of us remain silent. It's a meditative silence, drenched in glances, moving with frightening slowness between our feet. Some of us go to the window and raise our gaze to the sky, questioning that gray luminosity that hangs over the early morning hours. Can anyone really own the sun? Finally, the fire appears. The long, slashing streamers of flame above the houses, between the trees, on the edges of the garbage dump. The columns of black smoke. Order restored.

We come from afar, and suddenly we no longer know where we're going. We come from exhaustion and dehydration and time, which is passing. We have stopped knowing.

The midday light, vertical and sharp, filled with clumps of dust, illuminates our foreheads when we open the door and our backs when, finally, we begin to walk again. We come from the mountain, from the future, from the mouth of the animal. And something like a faint luminosity protects us as we slowly disintegrate, like an orange.