‘The Transmigration of Bodies’ by Yuri Herrera    (2013) –  101 pages    Translated by Lisa Dillman

Now is the time to ask.  How does Yuri Herrera do it?  How does he put us readers in the mood for his own distinctive form of noir with only a few short sentences?  Let’s look at the first few sentences of ‘The Transmigration of Bodies’.

“A scurvy thirst awoke him and he got up to get a glass of water, but the tap was dry and all that trickled out was a thin stream of dank air.”  

This definitely establishes the desolate mood for what follows.

“Eying the third of mescal on the table with venom, he got the feeling it was going to be an awful day.”

Here we get a sense of grim foreboding.

“He had no way of knowing it already was, had been for hours, truly awful, much more awful than the private little inferno he’d built himself on booze.”

Here we go from individual apprehension to a general sense of dread.

“He decided to go out.”

In a short staccato sentence, our hero acts.  With these few words, Herrera has set the mood which is desolate, truly awful.  This is a time of plague when everyone must wear masks over their faces to protect themselves.  However that terrible unease does not prevent our hero from acting.  Our hero is known as The Redeemer.  He fixes things between people.  In ‘The Transmigration of Bodies’ we have two families, each of whom are holding the dead body of a member of the other family.  Herrera gives us vivid descriptions of the decaying bodies   These are people the Redeemer has known and liked. It is up to The Redeemer to perform a body swap between these families in this desolate plague zone.

Herrera wins us over to the side of the Redeemer with the following:

“What did he expect, a man like him, who ruined suits the moment he put them on: no matter how nice they looked in shop windows, hanging off his bones they wrinkled in an instant, fell down, lost their grace.” 

I can sure identify with that remark.

‘The Transmigration of Bodies’ is not quite as austere and single-minded as ‘Signs Preceding the End of the World’.  In ‘Transmigration’ there are a few too many characters to keep track of.  However, ‘Transmigration’ contains enough good things so that I am giving it the same grade as ‘Signs’.    It is another strong performance from Herrera.

Herrera gives us an insight into his own writing when he discusses the words that get written on a tombstone:

“I will love you always.  I can never forgive you.  Forget about me.  I’ll be back.  You’ll pay for this.  Words that etch deeper than a chisel.” 

The funny thing is that in my notes I kept for ‘Transmigration’, I had already written “Short sentences that stay etched in the mind, chiseled, imprinted.”

Grade:    A-   

‘Signs Preceding the End of the World’ by Yuri Herrera   (2009) –   107 pages     Translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman

‘Signs Preceding the End of the World’ is a tough little Western novella written in distinctive heroic prose.  Every sentence has a fearless attitude.

The young lady Makina is on a mission for her mother.  She lives in the middle of Mexico, but she must cross the border into the grim and foreboding United States.

“Her mother, Cora, had called her and said Go and take this paper to your brother.  I don’t like to send you, child, but who else can I trust it to, a man?”

First Makina must meet up with a few shady guys including Mr. Aitch who “smiled and smiled, but he was still a reptile in pants”.

Here are the rules Makina lives by and which make her respected in her Village:

“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.”   

Then she must go to the Big Chilango, Mexico City.  You don’t mess with Makina; just ask the young guy who tried to grope her on the bus.  Later she will cross via inner tube the Rio Grande River where she will encounter the contempt of some roughneck Anglo bastards. Of course many of the people she meets on the northern side of the border are both homegrown (from Mexico) and Anglo.  The story maintains an epic heroic quality that is only partially diminished toward the end.

‘Signs Preceding the End of the World’ was the surprise winner of the Best Translated Book Award for this year, deservedly so.  The translator Lisa Dillman should be recognized, because her translation of this novella is a sustained performance.  I have no doubt that the novella itself is a fine piece of work, but the difficulty here is to translate not only the words but the attitude.  It is the singular voice of the narrator of the story that gives this novella its edge. At times the language is strange and unique, and the translator had to come up with her own made-up words.  For example the invented words ‘to verse’ are used to signify someone leaving or exiting as in “She opened the door and versed”.

I can almost guarantee you that once you have read the first few pages of this sharp novella, you will be happy you chose it to read.

Grade:    A-