Mandragon , livre ebook

This edition first published in the United States in 2014 by The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.
www.overlookpress.com
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Copyright © 2014 by R. M. Koster
Copyright © 1979 by Sueños, S. A.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now know or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
ISBN: 978-1-4683-1051-1
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
About the Author
About Mandragon
For Otilita, Ricky, and Lily
PREFACE
This is the third book of a trilogy. Like The Prince and The Dissertation , its setting is (mainly) the imaginary Central American Republic of Tinieblas, its subject is (largely) politics, its structure is that of a concerto for solo instruments and orcherstra, its chief character-the soloist who strtives against the collective-is a particular sort of leader. Certain characters are shared among the three books. Tinieblas itself can be seen as the main character of the work entire. There are, besides, thematic linkages. Each book, however, tells its own story and may be read independently of the others.
Mandragon is the shortest of the three, the simplest in design, and the least populous in characters, but it gave me the most trouble-no doubt because I didn t give it proper respect. I knew before I started how it would end which wasn t the case with The Prince or The Dissertation. I knew it would be relatively short. I didn t prepare for a life-or-death struggle, and for that the book taught me a lesson. It fought me for every page and came close winning. As a rule, when an author destroys an important character, it is as a scapegoat for himself.
What I like best in Mandragon are the Rotunda of Astounding Miracles in Amichevole s circus and the two Ticamalan customs men in Chapter 24 . The drought, also, is well realized. What I find most interesting, however, are the visions it extracted from me, at once clear and skewed. I found myself writing about the holy man as political leader. I also found myself writing about a billionnaire who finds refuge in Tinieblas, a refuge he gets because they want to shake him down for money. I had no idea why I was doing that, except that it helped me get a more important character back to Tinieblas and that it was fun. I made him a kind of Howard Hughes figure. One of the things I had him do was set up a modern dress version of the Garden of the Assassins as described by Marco Polo when he touches on the Nizari Shiites in thirteenth-century Persia. Okay, I finished the book in September 1978, and during 1979 I discovered what I was really doing. First Khomeini takes over in what was once called Persia, the holy man as political leader. Then the Shah of Iran takes refuge in Panama, where they try to shake him down. I have no way at all to account for it, but I find it interesting.
I wasn t seeking topicality, however. In 1983 an interviewer from the Rio paper O Globo asked me if I d written my trilogy to take advantage of the noteworthiness that Central America was experiencing. I told her no, nothing of the sort. When I wrote my Tinieblas books, no one cared about Central America, and my great hope was that (to paraphrase J. K. Galbraith on Southeast Asia) that Central America may somehow recapture the obscurity God intended for it.
I didn t go to Panama looking for trouble, but Panama is where I met the twentieth century and learned there s a Chinese curse that goes, May you live in an interesting period of history.
Anything you live intimately with for a long time-a dog, a car, a book-gets to be like a person. I feel gratitude toward The Prince. It didn t baby me, but it was on my side; it gave me confidence while I was writing it and, later on, my first success. I love The Dissertation: it gave me every pleasure generously. Mandragon I respect. A canny, tough, and thoroughly ruthless foe, it gave me scars. With its publication in this Overlook edition, the trilogy is available in a uniform, paperback format.
-R. M. K.
Panama, March 2014
NOTE
The artist s business, akin to Mandragon s, is to put people in touch with things not readily accessible in the ordinary course of reality. The artist s method may be called controlled dreaming.
This book is the third in a series of three-the right-hand panel, as it were, of a triptych-depicting imaginary people and imaginary events in the imaginary Republic of Tinieblas. How fine my frenzy was, how well I ve turned these unknown things to shapes, the reader may judge for himself-favorably, I hope-but I dreamed them up.
-R. M. K.
El quinto angel derramó su copa sobre el trono de la bestia; y su reino se cubrió de tinieblas, y mordían de dolor sus lenguas.
-A POCALIPSIS 16-10
1
One day Mandragon toured a personal future. One day I had a vision of myself:
A street slopes between three-story buildings hung with balconies. It is crowded with brown-faced people. Young men in undershirts, in T-shirts blazoned with soft-drink logos, in brightly colored sport shirts. Older men in flowing white four-pocket guayaberas, in linen suits. Girls and women in thin dresses, in slacks and brightly colored blouses, some with heads kerchiefed and their hair in rollers. The mulato-mestizo crowd of a Latin city.
They fill the walks and spill into the gutters, closing the greater portion of both lanes so that barely a yard is clear along the center. They push and jostle for a better vantage. They rise on tiptoe, peer up the street into the lifting sun. The sun roars at them from a hazy sky.
Above, the balconies are packed, the windows gargoyled with thrust torsos and craned faces. Everyone peers up along the street, which is overhung with leaning balconies and buildings, and widens toward a plaza higher up. Bolívar Avenue! Ciudad Tinieblas!
Four guardias on motorcycles lead a patrol truck down from Plaza Cervantes. Sirens on moan, bikes weaving in slow S curves, they carve a channel through the crowd. They ride straight-backed with elbows arced at shoulder level, and their mirror-lensed glasses, their plastic casques, their shiny carapaces of black leather, give them the aspect of gigantic bugs.
The patrol truck follows with its head lamps blinking in the morning glare, its dome light whirling hysterically. The driver glances nervously into the tumult eddying beside his fenders, but the major beside him stares straight ahead, arms folded over camouflage jump suit, face copper-masked in scorn, in contempt.
Someone trots behind the truck, on tether. Not someone! Mandragon! Me!
Howls of happy hatred from the crowd.
Handcuffed by the right wrist to the tow hitch at the rear of the patrol truck. Trots bent over, cupping the steel ball with both hands. Blue cotton prison shirt flaps loosely. Laceless prison slippers slap the street. Head hangs forward, bobs between stretched arms.
Behind come three tall ten-wheelers, their engines grumbling sternly in low gear. Soldiers sit in rows along the truck flanks, snakefaced assassins in camouflage jump suits and berets. The blue-black barrels of their assault rifles poke up between their thighs.
Objects are flying down from the balconies and windows. An egg splats on Mandragon s shoulder. A corncob clips my heel. A mango fizzes by Mandragon s ear and detonates on the floor of the patrol truck, shrapneling slime onto the boots of the three guardias inside, sending them scooting toward the cab to put more roof between them and incoming refuse. An old woman leans from a balcony; stretches out wizened neck the color of charred oak; smacks mandrill lips and spits.
The troop carriers roll slowly down Bolívar Avenue, the driver of the first keeping respectful distance between his bumper and my bum. Mandragon trots bent over. The patrol truck guides me between jeers and curses. The cyclists weave and sway, carving a path. Down into Plaza Inchado. Across the square and on between the Alcaldía and the palace. Left between the palace and Parque Mocoso. Up to the porte-cochere, where all halt.
Mandragon stands head down and panting. My shoulders produce an equine shudder. Then, while the sergeant and two privates jump down from the rear of the patrol truck and brace facing the palace, while the troops swarm down from their transports and form up in three ranks, while the major steps down from the cab and adjusts his beret, Mandragon sinks to knees, lays face on hands on the steel ball of the patrol-truck tow hitch. Eyes closed. Face smeared with terror and exertion. My powers have left me.
Parque Mocoso is cordoned off with presidential guards. They wear dress uniforms, royal purple with yellow trim, and stand at five-yard intervals with their machine pistols at port arms. A band, also in purple, is phalanxed just inside the park near the lead cyclist. Simón Mocoso stands on his pedestal, his left foot slightly forward, his left hand thrust toward the palace, his right hand grasping a green-tinged bronze replica of the Tinieblan Declaration of Independence. Behind stands the old tree, leafless save at its top branches, which (now tha