Pablo Piñero Stillmann
the longest earthquake
1.
My grandfather drew maps back when maps were hand drawn. Were he alive today he’d be useless like you and I. Or maybe he’d be a satellite. That was a joke. I’m not very funny.
2.
I won’t use names in the telling of this story—except for Valenzuela, as a way to honor it—for a couple of reasons. First of all, this already feels exploitative. The second reason is that it gives me an excuse to use a map key. It will not come as a shock to you that I was never a great student. I dreaded school, but remember the day they taught us to make map keys as a rare good day in which my talents were actually put to use. This probably had to do with the fact that I knew I was the granddaughter of a great illustrator of maps. I’ve never made a map key since then, so I’ll incorporate one into this story even though, let’s be honest, it is an impractical decision. It is also arbitrary as I could, for example, refer to my grandfather as “my grandfather,” without using his name, as I already did in the previous section and in this same sentence and will later do with my uncle and father.
3. KEY
Any symbolism other than that which is actually stated is purely coincidental and should not be taken into account.
✪ My grandfather ◗ My grandmother
❖ ✪’s home country ✙ The city where I was born
Φ President of ❖ (19**-**) ▲The country where I was born
4.
✪ left ❖ when Φ rose to power. He’d just graduated from a prestigious school of fine arts and urged all his family to leave with him. You’re so dramatic, they told him. Must be the artist’s curse! And they weren’t lying. ✪, a master of dimensions in his art, always had trouble judging the size and importance of outside threats. (This played an important role in the churrería incident.) But this time he’d be proven right. Even a broken clock, as they say. Did he actually have information to back up the claim that Φ would turn ❖ into Hell on Earth? No. ✪ actually knew very little about politics. He loved art and only art, had spent every moment of the previous four years either painting, in class or with his nose in the expensive art books his mother bought for him even though they couldn’t afford them. Strictly speaking his relatives made a mistake, sure, but ✪ had already cried wolf several times by then. A couple of years before he’d foreseen The End of Money in a column thus titled in his university newspaper. He also went around explaining to anyone who would listen that the proliferation of long waves from the increasing use of radios would have disastrous effects on the brain’s electric charges.
5. A LONGISH SORT OF PROLOGUE ONCE THE STORY IS ALREADY UNDERWAY
It must be addressed that I am telling you a story about a man I never met. How is this possible? Did I conduct a series of extensive interviews and rifle through documents in government offices? This wasn’t necessary. Though it might sound impossible, I’ve had a close relationship with ✪ from a very early age. He’s always been present through his absence. Everyone in my family has views—some more nuanced than others—on if what he did was wrong. More specifically, my uncle has always loathed ✪, and so his wife and children loathe ✪ too; my father, on the other hand, has always maintained that it’s impossible to judge a man who lived through so much. I used to think this way myself, but witnessing the consequences of his actions has angered me. “Hurt people hurt people,” say the self-help gurus. I agree. Still, all my negative feelings regarding him are tinged with guilt. It’s not easy to hate Job.
Another way in which I’ve had a close relationship with ✪ is that the few people I know who knew him all say I remind them of him. I have, they say, his creative drive, his anxious mannerisms and his dry sense of humor. (I said before that I wasn’t funny. This was a lie. Why did I lie to you? Maybe we were getting too close and it scared me.) And the last way that I’ve had a relationship with this ghost is that everyone in my family (with the exception of ◗) is constantly talking about him. Did you know that ✪ once got into a fistfight with a policeman? Is it true that he once told ◗ that he believed in astrology? For whom do you think ✪ would vote in the upcoming elections? Can you imagine what ✪ would think of our cousin’s new boyfriend? (I’d say he serves as our map if it weren’t an imperfect and 1000% corny metaphor.) So I’ve been able to connect the bits and pieces to tell this story as it probably happened. We all do this with our families, we fill in the blanks. Unfortunately not much can be gleamed from the journals that one of my cousins found in a box in ◗’s basement. They’re mostly sketches of people and places with a few terse statements here and there. If something is so mysterious that I have no clue why or how it happened, I won’t just make something up. No more lying. This is my promise to you.
6.
One of these impenetrable mysteries is why ✪ chose to come to ✙ since pretty much anywhere else would’ve provided less of a culture shock. ✪’s hometown was a quiet and reserved little village. Here in ✙, people communicate by shouting and need loud music in the background in order to carry out almost any task. Idiots are loud, he would always say. He also had to get accustomed to the humid subtropical climate and the suffocating corruption.
7.
✪ rented an apartment above a pharmacy just outside of downtown. As he was extremely talented, he had no trouble finding work as an illustrator for newspapers and magazines. He quickly became known for his maps. During the first few years he lived in ✙, all ✪ did was draw maps in the spare room he used as an office with classical music playing on his Sterling to drown out the street noise. He barely spent any money and never really spoke with anyone except for the Valenzuelas, the married couple who owned the pharmacy (with whom he communicated in broken English), and who sold him a tonic that he swore made him more creative. The reason ✪ did nothing but work was that he thought of this time in his life as a parenthetical. After all, one of two things was bound to happen soon:
A. Φ would show his true colors, finally scaring ✪’s family who would all immediately join ✪ in ✙.
B. Φ would turn out not to be so bad after all and ✪ would be able return to ❖ and continue his life where he’d left off.
8.
✪ got free subscriptions to the three newspapers he drew for: El Liberal, El Nacional and Nuevo Siglo. He learned Spanish by poring through the international news sections of these three periodicals for updates on what was happening in ❖. Whenever Φ would do or say something crazy, ✪ scribbled a letter to his family and ran to the post office to mail it. Φ did this awful thing! I told you! Come join me immediately! It will only get worse! It breaks my heart to think how much he missed and worried for his family, how completely alone he was in ✙. His relatives wrote back dismissing the warnings. The foreign press had no clue about what was happening in ❖. They lied to sell papers. After reading these letters, ✪, head down, would go to the pharmacy to drink a glass of tonic while the Valenzuelas attempted to console him. But the only thing that really calmed ✪ down was drawing his maps. They had become his friends, his psychoanalyst, his vice. Every publisher, newspaper and magazine in ▲ wanted their maps to be drawn by him. The other illustrators didn’t stand a chance. Like him, most were artists struggling to earn a living; unlike him, though, drawing maps for them was just a job, a means to an end, while for ✪ it meant nothing short of salvation. He found a solace in these illustrations that he’d never had with his paintings. His fee was the same as his competitors’ and his product clearly superior. ✪’s only demand was that they not rush him. If you need it done quickly hire someone else. Upon starting a new map his blood pressure lowered, his normally contracted face softened. ✪ spent as much time as he could on each one not due to work ethic or pride, but out of fear that when he finished it he’d go mad.
9.
After his first term ended, Φ was reelected. Heartbroken, ✪ spent a fortune calling his family long-distance. Now would they join him? He had enough money saved up and could help them set up a small business in ✙, a pastry shop or something. They wouldn’t budge. At least come visit, they pleaded. We miss you. But ✪ was terrified of Φ. The mere thought of stepping into what was now his country made him nervous.
10.
One evening ✪ went to the pharmacy for his daily tonic and was surprised to find that neither of the owners was behind the counter. Instead there was a young woman. Her half smile and almond-shaped eyes left him cold. ¿Qué necesita, señor? He became a mute. All he could do was stare at her white blouse buttoned all the way to the top. ✪ practically the silk against his fingers. And her hair! Charcoal black, parted and almost down to her waist. It was all too much. He’d been frequenting brothels since arriving in ✙, but he hadn’t actually shared a bed with a lover, like humans do, since leaving ❖. He mumbled, then stuttered and finally escaped without his tonic.
11.
The realization came to him minutes later while he worked on a map of Burma. His head fell on one of the encyclopedias scattered on the desk. No, it couldn’t be. Oh, God. Had that much time passed? He screamed into the encyclopedia. ✪ remembered the first time he spoke to Mr. Valenzuela. The man told him he had only one daughter, no sons. She was in the fourth grade. Wonderful student. This was that little girl. He did the math with his fingers. Now she was seventeen! Where had his youth gone? ✪ screamed once more. Were he the drinking type, he would’ve filled himself up with cheap whisky. What he did instead was lock the door to his study and continue working on his maps. The harder he worked the less he thought about the Valenzuela’s girl, Φ, his family, his loneliness and the passage of time. When he took a break to rest his eyes or eat a sandwich, all would come flooding back to him, so he stopped taking breaks. Upon finishing the maps he had to do for work he continued drawing maps, maps of countries that didn’t exist, of countries that should exist, of his apartment, of the brothels, of his genitals and brain, of heaven and hell and the purgatory. He finally broke down in a crying fit. Who knows what else went on in that apartment during those days. It would be ridiculous not to think that he at least considered taking his own life.
12.
The Valenzuelas, who’d been seeing ✪ practically every day from Monday to Saturday for years, became worried when he stopped showing up to the pharmacy. Mrs. Valenzuela rang his doorbell and got no answer. A neighbor let her into the building. Now she knocked on the door. No luck there either. She went to get a locksmith and when he finally let her in, Mrs. Valenzuela found ✪ swaying in his rocking chair with dead eyes. ¿Qué le pasa? ¿Está enfermo? (By then ✪ spoke with the Valenzuelas in Spanish.) Mrs. Valenzuela asked the locksmith to go get her daughter immediately and to tell her to bring some sedatives.
13.
Imagine ✪’s confusion when the first thing he saw as he woke up from his druggy sleep was the Valenzuela’s daughter sitting at his bedside reading Thomas Mann. Le preparé una sopa, señor. She looked after him for a couple of days. There are many versions of what happened there. (As I said, ◗ doesn’t like to talk about ✪.) The most romantic one says that while ✪ slept off his insanity, ◗ stepped into his study and was fascinated with what she saw. The most beautiful maps, of places real and imagined, hung on the wall, laid on the floor, overflowed the desk. This versión says that when ✪ opened his eyes, ◗ was already in love with him.
14. DISCLAIMER
What do I think of a man who’s almost thirty falling in love with a seventeen-year-old? What do you think I think?
15.
By the time ✪’s relatives were finally convinced Φ was a madman, it was already too late—the son of a bitch put the whole country on lockdown. The letters that now came for ✪, instead of trying to calm him down, told terrible stories of the military tearing the country to pieces. This was when ✪’s chronic insomnia took hold, when he began spending whole nights in the living room crying, refusing to be consoled.
16.
The letters stopped coming. ✪ never heard from anyone back home ever again. (At least I don’t think he did.) You and I know perfectly well what happened to them. When my uncle was born, ✪ suffered another psychic break. ◗ tended to him and the newborn baby simultaneously, as if she’d given birth to twins. The study became the baby’s room and the Valenzuelas let ✪, once he got better, use one of the back rooms of their pharmacy as an office. ✪ never fully stabilized. When he wasn’t working he was either irritable, angry or asleep. No one has ever claimed that he was a good husband or father. ◗, in an effort to help him, found a group of refugees from ❖ that had escaped to ▲ just before the closing of the borders. These were people who, in a panic, left everything to jump on whatever boat was leaving and it turned out that their boats just happened to come here. They met Thursday nights at a cantina and ✪ joined them a few times, but it only underscored his sense of isolation. He’d been living in ✙ for so long, made a life here, however small, that he (and the other refugees) felt he wasn’t like them. After all, he’d never lived in ❖ under Φ and ❖ under Φ was all they spoke of. The really sad thing is that it wasn’t like ✪ felt like a local in ✙ either. He still thought people were too loud, the streets were too dirty and he could never make himself care about the local soccer league.
17.
The hard question is: was escaping Φ the right decision?
18.
By the time my father was born, ❖ was crumbling. Φ had inaugurated his official strongman dictatorship by invading his neighbor to the north, a war that continued, and now they were also being attacked from the east. The borders of ❖ were constantly changing and it became the biggest of international stories. ✪ had more work than ever. Not only was he the best map illustrator, but he was actually from ❖! There wasn’t a single periodical that didn’t want their maps of the conflict to be drawn by him. ✪, as always, worked tirelessly, but it no longer gave him respite from Reality—this was the ultimate tragedy: the two had merged. Here he finished his metamorphosis into becoming a full-on angry loner. He was constantly having angry outbursts and on weekend days ◗ and her boys had to leave the apartment because ✪ spent Saturdays and Sundays resting in bed or lying on the living room couch.
19.
Soon after, the Valenzuelas closed down the pharmacy to retire in their native village. The space was rented to a man who turned it into what would become the most famous churrería in ✙. ✪ had to rent a studio and buy a used Renault to drive to and from work. He barely knew how to drive, hated dealing with traffic and frequently complained that this new, drab working space tamped down his creativity. And yet somehow it gets worse. The day the churrería opened—after weeks of noisy construction—, the apartment began to shake. ✪ came home for lunch and noticed a stack of plates in the kitchen was vibrating. There was a strange humming sound. He asked his wife if this was an earthquake. It’s the churrería. All morning she’d been scared of how her husband would react to the shaking. Did you tell them? She had, in fact, gone down there, baby in her arms, to ask what was going on. They’d explained that they had some powerful machinery in the kitchen and that it was normal for the apartment above them to shake a bit. Normal? They told you it was normal?
20.
✪ was foaming at the mouth when he got to the churrería. He began by shouting and cursing at the employees. Or maybe at first he tried to tell them calmly, as calmly as he could, that their machines were making his apartment shake. They offered him free churros for his troubles. Things got out of hand. Have you no sense of decency? he must’ve said in his viscous accent. You have invaded my home! Punches were thrown. ✪ spent a night in jail. When they let him out he went straight to his landlord’s office. I’m sorry for the inconvenience, said the landlord. In his journals, ✪ writes that although the people of ✙ always pretend to be polite, they are actually filled with aggression. It’s not a mere inconvenience, ✪ said. Six months remained on his lease and he wanted his money back so he could move his family into a non-vibrating apartment. Like I said, señor, I apologize for the inconvenience and wish there was something I could do. For the moment, however…
21.
He went straight to a payphone to call Mr. Valenzuela. Maybe he was weeping. How could you do this to me? (He must’ve, for the first time, now that things had forever changed, looked back fondly on his first years in ✙.) The Valenzuelas were rural folk. They hated ✙. Their plan had always been to make just enough money with the pharmacy to retire. ✪ knew about this plan, as his friends had spoken about it to him many times over the years, yet Mr. Valenzuela, calm as ever, explained the situation as if he were doing it for the very first time. The last thing ✪ ever said to his father-in-law was that he’d betrayed him.
22.
The family had no choice but to remain in the shaking apartment until the lease ran out. It’ll be the longest earthquake, joked ◗, and then things will go back to normal. ✪ didn’t laugh. (How long had it been since he’d laughed?) By then he had no idea what normal felt or looked like. Their children got used to the perennial vibration and although it bothered ◗, she kept it quiet. For ✪, however, things were more complicated. It wasn’t so much the shaking as the injustice of it all. Each time he felt the machines under him it was a reminder that the world was rotten and unfair. His brain flared and his stomach tightened. He’d always kept to himself, did what he had to do and never intruded on anyone else’s life, yet others kept poking at his peace of mind. All I ever wanted was to be left alone. That’s a phrase from one of his journals. I don’t believe it. All he ever wanted was to love and be loved, but to admit this would’ve been too painful.
23.
I’ve racked my brain over the years trying to figure out why ✪ disappeared the same day he was finally liberated from the shaking apartment. Come up with your own theory as to where he went in his Renault and it’ll be just as valid as the ones I continually trade with family members. He moved in with a mistress and started a family with her. He went back to ❖ join the resistance that would eventually, after much fighting, topple Φ. He rented a motel room and shot himself. What I do know is that he was broken. I am broken, too. Believe me. My family was born from trauma. It’s what we call home.
24. EPILOGUE (ANOTHER DISCLAIMER)
Unfortunately I can’t end this with that last sentence from the previous section. I’d feel guilty if I didn’t stress that there are much more positive versions of ✪ out there. Ask my cousins to tell you about him and you’d think they were talking about a different person. Not long ago I was at a Halloween party and met the grandson of the man who used to be Nuevo Siglo’s managing editor back in ✪’s time. He was dressed as a baseball player and I was a pumpkin. He said that his grandfather, who lived to the age of ninety, used to tell him about ✪. They sometimes spoke at the newspaper’s offices when ✪ went to deliver his maps. He said that your grandfather was a brilliant and wise man, said the baseball player. This type of thing has happened to me before. I just nod and tell them that ✪ was an exceptional man.
Pablo Piñero Stillmann’s work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, The Normal School, Washington Square Review, and other journals. His novel, Temblador, was published in Mexico by Tierra Adentro.