Eucalyptus Read online

  Biblioasis International Translation Series

  General Editor: Stephen Henighan

  I Wrote Stone: The Selected Poetry of Ryszard Kapuściński (Poland)

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  Good Morning Comrades by Ondjaki (Angola)

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  Kahn & Engelmann by Hans Eichner (Austria-Canada)

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  Dance with Snakes by Horacio Castellanos Moya (El Salvador)

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  Black Alley by Mauricio Segura (Quebec)

  Translated by Dawn M. Cornelio

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  Love Poems by Jaime Sabines (Mexico)

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  The End of the Story by Liliana Heker (Argentina)

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  The Tuner of Silences by Mia Couto (Mozambique)

  Translated by David Brookshaw

  For As Far as the Eye Can See by Robert Melançon (Quebec)

  Translated by Judith Cowan

  Eucalyptus by Mauricio Segura (Quebec)

  Translated by Donald Winkler

  MAURICIO SEGURA

  EUCALYPTUS

  TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY

  DONALD WINKLER

  BIBLIOASIS

  WINDSOR, ONTARIO

  Copyright © Mauricio Segura, 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll-free to 1-800-893-5777.

  Originally published as Eucalyptus by Éditions du Boréal, Montreal, 2010.

  FIRST EDITION

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Segura, Mauricio, 1969-

  [Eucalyptus. English]

  Eucalyptus / Mauricio Segura ; translated by Donald Winkler.

  (Biblioasis international translation series)

  Translation of: Eucalyptus.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-927428-37-5 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-927428-38-2 (epub)

  I. Winkler, Donald, translator II. Title. III. Title: Eucalyptus.

  English IV. Series: Biblioasis international translation series

  PS8587.E384E9213 2013 C843’.54 C2013-904438-8

  Edited by Stephen Henighan

  Copy-edited by Allana Amlin

  Typeset by Chris Andrechek

  Cover Design by Kate Hargreaves

  Biblioasis acknowledges the ongoing financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage, the Canada Book Fund; and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Arts Council. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the National Translation Program for Book Publishing for our translation activities.

  This is for Antoine (seven years old),

  my travelling companion in the exploration

  of bottomless depths and lost galaxies.

  He thought that it was loneliness which he was

  trying to escape and not himself.

  William Faulkner, Light in August

  1

  On the horizon, pools of water vaporized as he advanced. His hand gripped the wheel, but it was as if it belonged to someone else. For several kilometres, Alberto had been driving oblivious to the fly that was spinning drunkenly, careening off the windows, buzzing furiously. Nor did he notice the bright yellow of the wheat fields rolling by on both sides. He only came to himself when the pickup crossed the old metal bridge over the Bío Bío, where there was a gaggle of children giddy with laughter bobbing along in the river’s treacherous current. On the bank, their parents were stuffing themselves with meat off the grill and drinking red wine from plastic cups, while keeping a lazy eye on their offsprings’ dangerous games. That’s it, he thought, I’m here. He lowered the window to savour the elusive, vaguely clinical odour of the eucalyptus bordering the Pan-American Highway, and told himself that even his knowledge of the southern flora, he owed to his father.

  In the rear-view mirror he saw Marco who, his eyes closed, his lips puffy, was resting his forehead on the atlas for children they had found in a Santiago bookstore. Earlier, his son had asked:

  “When Abuelo saw me, what did he say?”

  “Nothing, he took you in his arms and he rocked you. You were only a baby.”

  “But Papa, why didn’t you take a picture of Abuelo and me?”

  “Abuelo doesn’t like pictures.”

  It took a moment before it struck him that he was using the present tense.

  “And why doesn’t he like pictures?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the way he is.”

  “Oh Papa, I want a picture of Abuelo and me!”

  “That’s not possible now. I already told you why.”

  His son turned his head towards the window, his arms crossed, pouting, and was soon asleep.

  Now, making out in the distance the blue and white sign of a gas station, he slowed and stopped in front of a pump. As he turned off the engine, he wondered whether he had made a mistake by borrowing such a gas-guzzler from his uncle. Should he have listened to his mother, who had insisted that he take the afternoon train? Probably. But still reeling from the shock of Anne-Marie’s leaving him a few months earlier, he didn’t want to be alone with his mother, especially in a train compartment, with the scrutiny of his personal life that was sure to come. And so he had chosen to travel with his son, and to nurse his wounds in peace. What was curious was that from the moment he’d heard about his father, he expected to be overwhelmed. But instead of being overcome with emotion, he’d been mulling over what his Aunt Noemi had said to him over the phone—she who was the only one among his father’s brothers and sisters who had stayed on good terms with him. What was this illness that had so rapidly undermined his father’s health? Had he himself not spoken to him on the phone barely five months ago, and had not his voice seemed strong and robust?

  He shot a glance towards the garage. When he sounded his horn, sparrows hopping about an oily puddle of water flew off in every direction. A man in grey overalls came out, wiping his hands on a rag. He wore his cap so low, almost to his eyebrows, that Alberto could not see his face. When, standing next to the driver’s door, he asked what it would be, Alberto said a full tank. The man took the nozzle and, as he bent down to insert it, Alberto saw his profile in the outside mirror. He had the same lined and angular face, the same narrowed eyes, the same indrawn lips, but it was not so much the familiar features as his air of treacherous guile that suddenly brought his father to mind. An unlaced boot propped on a garden chair, a cigarette between the index and middle finger, the vision assailed him for the umpteenth time, larger than life, while behind him between two hills the sun set, crimson and fatalistic. The unflinching eyes, deceptively lazy, with just a glimmer of light at the corners, spoke of an ironic resignation, and an irascibility that could surface from one moment to the next. And so although he knew the scene was imagined, he distinctly heard, in a soft voice that was never his father’s, as if he had at last let down his guard: “We never understood each other, Alberto.”

  The man was h
olding out his hand. He twice beckoned with his thin, oil-stained fingers. Alberto fumbled in his pockets and brought out two ten-thousand-peso bills. The man turned his back and disappeared into the darkness of the garage. After a moment, seeing that he was not going to come back with any change, Alberto started the engine and made his way back onto the Pan-American.

  WHEN THE PICKUP entered the outlying neighbourhoods of Temuco, Alberto took no notice of the election posters glued to the telephone poles, with either the lunar face and tired eyes of Francisco Huenchumilla, the mayoral candidate for the Concertación, or the open gaze and parted hair of Miguel Becker, candidate for the Alliance party. All he saw, through the smog here and there perforated by the sun, were the first little wooden houses, greyish yellow, tilted to the side as if about to collapse. These dwellings reminded him of another arrival in Temuco in the company of his father. It was 1990, no more than a month after the return of democracy. For the first time since his exile to Canada in 1974, his father was setting foot in that city so dear to his heart. As for Alberto, he would be in Chile only briefly, as he had decided to remain in Montreal to pursue his studies while his parents and brother returned to the country of their birth. Under Alberto’s attentive gaze his father, bright eyed, at the wheel, noted every detail, while the mother and brother were slumped in the back seat. Yes, he thought, Papa preferred this city to many of the people around him. But above all, he thought: Yes, it is now that the family is breaking up, decomposing like molecules being brought to the boil, and we are scattering to the four corners of the American continent.

  Now, as he drove along the Avenida Alemania, past its expensive houses with wrought iron fences and vast gardens and the monochrome condominiums rising up behind, it occurred to him that the reunion of the four members of his family, a reunion he had so often longed for over the past years, and even more intensely during the last four months, was no longer possible. As he parked the truck in front of the slope-roofed house of his grandparents, he was overcome by a sense of emptiness. Yes, that is what he felt, because it would not be until a few hours later, when he would see the scar on his father’s remains, that he would be overwhelmed by grief. Standing on the sidewalk he scrutinized the house for a long time, with its warped roof, its peeling paint, and dust encrusted window panes, only a shadow of what it once had been. He helped Marco out of the vehicle.

  Alberto rang, but no one came to the door. He turned the knob and cautiously entered the living room, where the silence was broken only by the clock that marked off, painfully, the passing of every second. He and Marco went from one room to another and soon discovered, upstairs, a form on a bed under a white embroidered eiderdown. In a corner, in front of the hazy light drifting in through window, a woman wrapped in a manta dozed, her profile noble, her skin shrivelled. It was Abuela. When he crept around the bed, Alberto saw the thin and livid face of his father, who seemed to have aged enormously. Someone had dressed him in a white shirt he would never have consented to wear when he was alive. What is more, he was in a position that did not suit him, lying on his back with his hands clasped over his stomach, giving him a meditative air. When, by his side, Marco froze, fearful, Alberto pulled him gently towards him. After a moment, in a touching gesture, his son bent his ear to the corpse’s chest, as if to confirm that the heart had well and truly stopped.

  “Oh, Abuelo …” said Marco, raising his head.

  Then, dizzyingly, his memory disgorged multiple images of his father. He remembered when he was always neatly dressed, the hem of his white tunic thrown up by his rapid strides. He remembered him in a plaid shirt, construction boots always unlaced, when, exhausted, he pushed open the door of their cramped apartment in the neighbourhood of Côte-des-Neiges. He saw him bearded, his hair long, just as in the photos taken when he was going to university and living only for meetings and demonstrations. Finally, he remembered him from the last time he had paid him a visit, wearing a rippling leather hat with a lasso hanging from his waist, sharp-eyed, taciturn like the peasants around him on the farm he ran with an iron fist. He thought again of all these roles his father had played, and could not connect them.

  How he would have liked to collect his thoughts, to lay down at the foot of this body the confused tangle of emotions at work within him!

  When Abuela began to moan, doubtless in the throes of a nightmare, Alberto took Marco by the hand and left the room.

  ONCE IN THE COURTYARD, Alberto didn’t see him right away, because he was off to the side, out of the sun, under a corrugated iron roof. Enrique, his father’s youngest brother, an adopted son whose family name, Araya, had stuck to him like a birthmark, had been skin and bones just a few years ago; now he lifted his arms slowly, breathed through his mouth, and would have had trouble tying his own shoelaces. An axe over his head, the other hand holding a log, he looked more and more like his boss, thought Alberto, remembering the fleshy butcher with white hair and a sharp tongue. It seemed to him, from where he stood, that the axe grazed Araya’s fingers when it fell. The high grass, colour of straw, had overgrown everything in the courtyard: bald tires, the old body of a Coccinelle with shattered windows, tools, iron bars. What would Abuelo have thought of this neglected yard, he who had succeeded in restoring the house? Too old to go on working the land, his children having left it, he had acquired it to bring the family together again, something he had achieved in part, since four of his daughters came to live here with their husbands and children. That was what made it possible for him to live out the last of his days in something of a domestic circle, as he had hoped.

  “You’ve seen the weather?” asked Araya, raising his eyes.

  When Alberto looked at the sky, he had to squint.

  “You ever remember heat like this in October?” Araya went on. “I’m telling you, the planet is all topsy-turvy.”

  With disturbing ease, like a knife cutting through quesillo, the axe split the log in two. Araya stood the axe head on the concrete, looked Marco up and down, and balanced another log on the stump.

  “No point looking for anybody.”

  He leaned over and spat to the side.

  “Noemi’s left for the campo,” he added, referring to his father’s land. “And to Cunco too I guess, for the legal papers … I figure you must be happy to be back. That makes what, four years that you haven’t been to see us?”

  “Four years. Exactly.”

  “So tell me. You still freezing your balls off in the land of hockey?”

  Alberto smiled, and as Araya launched into a playful description of a fight during a game he’d seen on TV, he thought to himself that the last time he was here his uncle did not have this ragged beard now growing like a weed.

  “And the little one’s mother?”

  As Alberto did not reply right away, Araya said:

  “You know, I’m separated too.”

  When he smiled mockingly, his double chin was more noticeable. So he’d heard about his recent marital problems. But who had talked to him, since even his father had known nothing about it. His mother?

  “There’s nothing to be ashamed of in that, you know …”

  “Did I say I was ashamed?”

  “You really look like one, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “A writer. You know, I can’t stand novels. But when I come across a writer on TV, I stay on the channel. Those guys fascinate me, they have something, I don’t know what exactly … Seems you have to teach too?”

  Alberto nodded yes, thinking: “He’s up on everything. He knows I don’t like teaching. That it takes up all my time, making me work late at night on my hypothetical novels, once Marco is asleep.” To change the subject, he asked him when the burial would be.

  “If you ask me, there won’t be many people at the cemetery,” Alaya replied.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He didn’t know how to make himself loved, you
r old man. He didn’t have the knack. And what are you going to do with his land? You know it goes back to you, right, to you and your brother?”

  “I don’t know yet. We’ll see.”

  “But you know what he had, right? They said ‘internal hemorrhage.’ You believe that?”

  Alberto was suddenly all ears, but he kept quiet.

  “In my opinion,” Araya went on, “he hurt himself and didn’t deal with it. And what happened happened. He went down. And so fast, my friend …”

  He laughed openly, in a way that clearly gave him satisfaction.

  “You know me, I’m not like the others here, all religious fanatics. Still, the way he died makes you think. God’s punishment? You can’t rule that out.”

  Alberto tolerated Araya’s gaze for a long moment, then he beckoned Marco to come near. Side by side, they walked towards the house.

  “Hey, wait … Wait, I said!”

  Alberto stopped in the doorway and slowly turned around.

  “Come here,” Araya continued, “Sit down … Sit down, I tell you!”

  Alberto dropped his son’s hand and, reluctantly, lowered himself onto the sofa leaning against the house’s brick wall.

  “I understand you, you know,” said Araya. “Me too, when I was younger I idolized your father.”

  “I don’t idolize my father.”

  “Are you sure? Anyway, there’s one thing you can’t deny. Roberto ran away from Chile. You understand? He ran away. That’s what’s behind everything.”

  “He left because his life was in danger.”

  “He left because he was just waiting to leave. Your father was ambitious, very ambitious. He dreamed of the North.”