Yuri Herrera: Signs Preceding the End of the World

Makina noticed that from his belt hung a long, thin knife and that Mr. P patted it nonstop. Very slowly, she at last pulled out the packet that was for him. Mr. P held out his hand, weighed up the package without taking his eyes off her, and passed it to one of his associates. He patted and patted his knife and smiled at Makina while the associates opened the package, closed the package and in anglo said We’re cool. Mr. P, though, kept leering and smiling at Makina and patting his dangling knife, and she wanted to go now but couldn’t muster enough of a voice for even the first syllable.

Wouldn’t you like to come work for me, child? asked Mr. P, eyeing her crotch.

I’m here for my brother.

Of course, the brother.

Mr. P stopped looking, scratched his chin and repeated The brother, the brother.

His eyes scanned the stadium with idle curiosity, he turned, and the associates began to verse leisurely down the tunnels, until Makina was all alone.

They are homegrown and they are anglo and both things with rabid intensity; with restrained fervor they can be the meekest and at the same time the most querulous of citizens, albeit grumbling under their breath. Their gestures and tastes reveal both ancient memory and the wonderment of a new people. And then they speak. They speak an intermediary tongue that Makina instantly warms to because it’s like her: malleable, erasable, permeable; a hinge pivoting between two like but distant souls, and then two more, and then two more, never exactly the same ones; something that serves as a link.

More than the midpoint between homegrown and anglo their tongue is a nebulous territory between what is dying out and what is not yet born. But not a hecatomb. Makina senses in their tongue not a sudden absence but a shrewd metamorphosis, a self-defensive shift. They might be talking in perfect latin tongue and without warning begin to talk in perfect anglo tongue and keep it up like that, alternating between a thing that believes itself to be perfect and a thing that believes itself to be perfect, morphing back and forth between two beasts until out of carelessness or clear intent they suddenly stop switching tongues and start speaking that other one. In it brims nostalgia for the land they left or never knew when they use the words with which they name objects; while actions are alluded to with an anglo verb conjugated latin-style, pinning on a sonorous tail from back there.

Using in one tongue the word for a thing in the other makes the attributes of both resound: if you say Give me fire when they say Give me a light, what is not to be learned about fire, light and the act of giving? It’s not another way of saying things: these are new things. The world happening anew, Makina realizes: promising other things, signifying other things, producing different objects. Who knows if they’ll last, who knows if these names will be adopted by all, she thinks, but there they are, doing their damnedest.

The paper the old man had slipped her bore an address in another city but it seemed there was no need to verse this one to get to that one: it was simply a matter of riding busses and crossing streets and passing malls and after lots of the first and even more of the second and several of the third, she’d arrive.

She almost didn’t realize when she reached it, because the cities had no center for avenues to radiate from. She just suddenly started seeing the name of the other place on stores and fire trucks. She kept walking the way she’d been told by some homegrown anglos she’d spoken to, and as she made her way the sky got redder and the air began to ice up.

Her lips were split and her palms cracked if she pulled them from her jacket pockets.

Eight times she asked before she found the spot and every time the abject answer turned out to be some bleak tundra where they sent her to another bleak tundra:

She asked the way to the city and they told her Over there (finger pointing to where the sun comes up).

She asked farther on for the way to the suburb and they told her There’s four with that name, but maybe she wanted the one by the bridge.

She asked farther on for the way to the bridge, but they told her she didn’t want that suburb but the one with the zoo.

She asked farther on for the way to the zoo and they told her it was near the statue of a man in a frock coat.

She asked farther on for the way to the statue of the man in a frock coat and they said Can’t you see, it’s right behind you.

Then she asked for the way to the street written down and they said This is it.

She asked for the way to her brother, perhaps too urgently, and they shrugged.

She asked finally for the way to the promised land and that person looked annoyed before responding.

There was still some light in the sky but it was turning dark, like a giant pool of drying blood.

Her brother had sent two or three messages back with assorted migrants on their way home. Two or three and not two, or three; Makina couldn’t say for sure because after the first one the one that followed and maybe one more were the same old story.

The first one said:

I haven’t found the land yet, but it won’t be long now, you’ll see.

Everything’s so stiff here, it’s all numbered and people look you in the eye but they don’t say anything when they do.

They celebrate here, too, but they don’t dance or pray, it’s not in honor of anyone. The only real big celebration is the turkey feast, which is a good one because all you do is eat and eat.

It’s really lonely here, but there’s lots of stuff. I’m going to bring you some when I come. I just have to take care of this and then I’ll be back, you’ll see.

The second one didn’t mention the country or the land or his plans. It said:

I’m fine, I have a job now.

And the third, if it existed, might’ve made the same claim, this way:

I said I was fine so stop asking.

It had taken everything she had just to pronounce the eight tundras. To cleave her way through the cold on her own, sustained by nothing but an ember inside; to go from one street to another without seeing a difference; to encounter barricades that held people back for the benefit of cars. Or to encounter people who spoke none of the tongues she knew: whole barrios of clans from other frontiers, who questioned her with words that seemed traced in the air. The weariness she felt at the monuments of another history. The disdain, the suspicious looks. And again the cold, getting colder, burrowing into her with insolence.

And when she arrived and saw what she’d come to find it was sheer emptiness.

And yet machines were still at work. That was the first thing she noticed when they pointed the place out to her: excavators obstinately scratching the soil as if they needed urgently to empty the earth; but the breadth of that abyss and the clean cut of its walls didn’t correspond to the modest exertion of the machines. Whatever once was there had been pulled out by the roots, expelled from this world; it no longer existed.

I don’t know what they told you, declared the irritated anglo, I don’t know what you think you lost but you ain’t going to find it here, there was nothing here to begin with.

Scum, she heard as she climbed the eighth hill from which, she was sure, she’d catch sight of her brother. You lookin to get what you deserve, you scum? She opened her eyes. A huge redheaded anglo who stank of tobacco was staring at her. Makina knew the bastard was just itching to kick her or fuck her and got slowly to her feet without taking her eyes off him, because when you turn your back in fear is when you’re at the greatest risk of getting your ass kicked; she opened the door and versed.