The Vortex: A Novel - Softcover

Rivera, José Eustasio

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822371103 ISBN 13: 9780822371106

Verlag: Duke University Press, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

Published in 1924 and widely acknowledged as a major work of twentieth-century Latin American literature, José Eustasio Rivera's The Vortex follows the harrowing adventures of the young poet Arturo Cova and his lover Alicia as they flee Bogotá and head into the wild and woolly backcountry of Colombia. After being separated from Alicia, Arturo leaves the high plains for the jungle, where he witnesses firsthand the horrid conditions of those forced or tricked into tapping rubber trees. A story populated by con men, rubber barons, and the unrelenting landscape, The Vortex is both a denunciation of the sensational human-rights abuses that took place during the Amazonian rubber boom and one of the most famous renderings of the natural environment in Latin American literary history.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

José Eustasio Rivera (1889–1928) was a Colombian poet, novelist, and lawyer. The Vortex is his best-known and most influential work.

John Charles Chasteen is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and is the author and translator of numerous books.

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The Vortex

A Novel

By José Eustasio Rivera, John Charles Chasteen

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2018 Duke University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8223-7110-6

CHAPTER 1

BEFORE I FELL FOR ANY WOMAN, I lost my heart to a sensation. Call it Intensity. No fainting sensitivities, no tender looks and confidences for me. More than a lover, I was always the subjugator. My lips did not know how to plead. And yet, I still believed in the ideal of love, still wanted the divine gift of spiritual fire to spread over my body like flames over tinder.

When Alicia's eyes worked their unfortunate magic on me, I had almost given up hope. My arms, grown tired of liberty, had reached out to many women — seeking to be enchained — but no one guessed my secret dreams, nor disturbed the silence in my heart.

Alicia required little effort. She gave herself without hesitation, all for the love she hoped to find in me. She was not thinking about marriage, even after her family conspired to fix everything, with the help of the priest, by force if need be. She revealed their plans to me, saying that she would never marry, that she would not stand in the way of my future happiness.

Then, when her family cast her out and the judge informed my lawyer that I would be going to jail for ravishment, I went to Alicia's hiding place and declared my resolve not to abandon her.

"My future is yours. Promise me your love, and we'll escape together to somewhere far from Bogotá."

And we were off to the Casanare territory.

* * *

That night, the first in Casanare, my confidant was Insomnia.

Through the mosquito netting, in the limitless heavens, I watched the winking stars. The palms under which we camped stopped their rustling, and an infinite silence floated in the air, making it thicker and bluer. Beside my string hammock, Alicia slept, breathing heavily, in her narrow cot.

"What have you done?" I thought. "What of your future, your dreams of glory, and the beginnings of your literary success? And what about this young woman, whom you sacrifice to your desire? Idiot! Once your desire is satisfied, what good is the body that you have acquired at such a high price? Because Alicia's spirit has never really belonged to you. Even now, when you can feel the heat and murmur of her breathing at your shoulder, you remain as far away from her spiritually as from that constellation sliding toward the horizon over there."

I felt less emboldened now, not because I feared to confront the consequences of my actions, but rather because after the intensity of love and possession comes something else. I was already bored with Alicia.

The hair-raising stories about Casanare did not frighten me. My instincts impelled me to defy the dangers of the wild frontier. I was certain that I would survive to tell the tale and later, amid the civilized comforts of some city as yet unknown to me, look back on the dangers of Casanare with nostalgia. Alicia, on the other hand, weighed on me like an iron shackle around my ankle. She had left Bogotá in a great upset and demonstrated her complete uselessness the first day on the road. Why couldn't she be a little tougher and more capable? She had never ridden a horse and could not even stand to be in the direct sun very long. She kept dismounting and saying that she preferred to walk, obliging me to do the same.

I was amazingly patient with her. There we were, supposedly fugitives, ambling along at a snail's pace, leading our mounts as if on a Sunday stroll, unable to get off the road to avoid meeting the occasional travelers coming in the other direction. Most were simple country people who stopped to ask me, with concerned expressions and hat in hand, why the young lady was crying.

Several times I tried with a rope to pull down the telegraph wire that ran along the road, but I gave up the attempt, possibly because of a vague desire to be captured. At least that way I would be free of Alicia and would recover the liberty of spirit that physical detention cannot take away. Arriving in sight of the town of Cáqueza, which lay squarely in our path, we stopped to await the cover of darkness. The authorities there might have been informed of our flight. Skirting the town, we slipped into the sugarcane fields that flanked the river, our nags munching noisily on the cane without pausing in their stride. It was harvest time, and we approached a sugar mill that was working all night. Taking shelter under a makeshift canopy of palm fronds, we listened to the groaning of the wooden grinders crushing cane. Shadows passed across the flickering glow of the fire that reduced the sap to cane syrup: first, the large shadow of the oxen that walked a circular path to drive the machinery, then, the small shadow of the little boy who followed behind, prodding the oxen with a pointed stick to keep them moving. Some women were preparing a meal, and they gave Alicia an infusion of herbs with medicinal properties.

We stayed with them for a week.

* * *

Meanwhile, I paid one of the sugar workers to bring me news from Bogotá, and the news was disturbing. My flight with Alicia had created a great scandal, and the story was on everyone's lips. The whisperings of my personal enemies fanned the flames, and the newspapers took advantage of the public's prurient interest. I had sent a letter to a friend requesting his help, and his reply was discouraging indeed. It concluded: "If you return, you'll surely be arrested. Casanare is now your only refuge, I'm afraid. Who will look for a man like you in a place like that?"

That same afternoon, Alicia warned me that the owner of the mill considered us suspicious. His wife had asked Alicia whether we were brother and sister, man and wife, or perhaps merely friends, and she said that if we happened to be counterfeiters, "there being nothing wrong with that, in view of the present regime," she would like to see a sample. So we left the next day before dawn.

"Don't you think, Alicia, that we may really have no reason to flee? Wouldn't it be better to return to Bogotá?"

"Now I'm sure you're tired of me!" she wailed. "Why did you bring me, then? It was your idea! Get out of here! Go to Casanare by yourself, and leave me alone!"

She started sobbing again.

And again I felt sorry for her. By now she had revealed to me the whole sad story. While still quite young, she had fallen in love with her cousin, an inconsequential boy not much older than herself, and they secretly swore to be married one day. Her mother and father had other ideas, however. They intended to marry her to a rich old landowner who was not to Alicia's taste in the slightest. Then I appeared on the scene, and the aging suitor, fearing the new competition, redoubled his suit. The value and frequency of his gifts increased and, with the help of Alicia's enraptured family, he seemed about to attain the prize. That is when Alicia, seeking to escape at all cost, hurled herself into my arms. But the danger had not passed, because the old landowner still wanted to marry her, it seemed, in spite of everything.

"I won't go back," she insisted, jumping off her horse. "Leave me! I don't want anything from you. I'll walk along this road and ask everyone for charity before I accept anything from you. Bastard!"

And she sat down in the grass. Having lived long enough, I knew better than to reason with a woman in that state, so I remained firmly mute while she sat pulling grass up convulsively by the fistful.

"Alicia, this only proves...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Duke University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0822371103
• ISBN 13: 9780822371106
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 236
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Niederlande