PRAISE FOR MARIO BELLATIN

  “One of Mexico’s best-known novelists … Bellatin is usually included in a group of post-boom Latin American writers, such as the Chilean Roberto Bolaño and the Argentine César Aira, who have introduced innovations not only in the style of their prose but in the way they think about literature. In Bellatin’s stories, the line between reality and fiction is blurry; the author himself frequently appears as a character. His books are fragmentary, their atmospheres bizarre, even disturbing. They are full of mutations, fluid sexual identities, mysterious diseases, deformities.” —The New Yorker

  “People often say, with a lot of truth to it, that all good fiction writing comes from some wound, out of some distance that needs to be breached between a writer and normalcy. In Mario’s sense, the wound is literal and comes with all kinds of psychological nuance and pain, and seems related to sexuality and desire, the desire for a whole body. One of my favorite aspects of him is this sense that he is writing for all the freaks—either literally freaks or privately and metaphorically, that he really touches us.” —Francisco Goldman

  “Bellatin offers a different way of reading, and of telling, a story—one in which what is unsaid, incompletely rendered, allows respectful room for discovering and conveying more than we might have imagined, or were told that we could.” —Words Without Borders

  “Mario Bellatin [is one of the] writers without whom there’s no understanding of this entelechy that we call new Latin American literature.” —Roberto Bolaño

  “[Bellatin] revels in the potential of the written word to distort, amuse, and, ultimately, to free.”

  — Nina Sparling, The Rumpus

  “In a score of novellas written since 1985, [Bellatin] has not only toyed with the expectations of readers and critics but also bent language, plot, and structure to suit his own mysterious purposes, in ways often as unsettling as they are baffling.”

  — The New York Times

  “If literature aims to make us less alone, we need writers like Bellatin who reflect not just a different perspective on life, but can envision something separate and apart, a periscope rising above the self.” —Matt Bucher, Electric Literature

  “Bellatin’s extraordinary use of intertextuality and metatextuality draws attention to itself; it is as if his stories were as incomplete as his own body, as his alter egos walking around in his fictional worlds.”

  — Jeffrey Zuckerman, Los Angeles Review of Books

  MRS. MURAKAMI’S GARDEN

  ALSO AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH BY MARIO BELLATIN

  Beauty Salon

  (translated by David Shook)

  Flowers &Mishima’s Illustrated Biography

  (translated by Kolin Jordan)

  Jacob the Mutant

  (translated by Jacob Steinberg)

  The Large Glass

  (translated by David Shook)

  Shiki Nagaoka: A Nose for Fiction

  (translated by David Shook)

  The Transparent Bird’s Gaze

  (translated by David Shook)

  MRS. MURAKAMI’S GARDEN

  Oto no-Murakami monogatari

  Mario Bellatin

  Translated from the Spanish by

  Heather Cleary

  Deep Vellum Publishing

  Dallas, Texas

  Deep Vellum Publishing

  3000 Commerce St., Dallas, Texas 75226

  deepvellum.org · @deepvellum

  Deep Vellum is a 501c3 nonprofit literary arts organization founded in 2013 with the mission to bring the world into conversation through literature.

  Copyright © Mario Bellatin, 2000

  English translation copyright © Heather Cleary, 2020

  FIRST EDITION, 2020

  All rights reserved.

  Support for this publication has been provided in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts, the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture’s ArtsActivate program, and the Moody Fund for the Arts:

  978-1-64605-029-1 (paperback) | 978-1-64605-030-7 (ebook)

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER: 2020945030

  Cover Artwork & Design by Justin Childress | justinchildress.co

  Interior Layout and Typesetting by KGT

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  1.

  2.

  3.

  Notes

  1.

  Mrs. Izu Murakami’s garden would soon be dismantled, its great black and white stones removed. Its streams would be drained, along with the pond at its center, now filled with golden carp. Mrs. Murakami used to sit by that pond for hours on end, watching the flashes of fin and scale. She abandoned this pastime when she became a widow. The house was sealed off from the world, its windows shuttered. But the garden retained its splendor. The care of the residence was left to the elderly servant Shikibu. The garden was tended by an experienced old man hired by Mrs. Murakami to check on it twice a week.

  Late some afternoons, at the hour when shadows blur the contours of things, Mrs. Murakami thinks she sees her husband’s silhouette across the pond. Now and then she senses him waving to her, so she sits on one of the stones along the path and squints toward the far end of the garden. These visions only appear under favorable atmospheric conditions. Once, she watched the ghost sink feet first into one of the streams.

  Her husband’s death was a terrible ordeal. He spent his final days in a state of delirium, calling for none other than Etsuko, his wife’s former saikoku.1 He wanted to see her breasts again. At first, Mrs. Murakami tried not to hear him. She ignored the dying man’s pleas and sought to maintain her composure at his side. Only Shikibu noticed the faint blush that rose to her cheeks, especially when her husband mentioned Etsuko in front of the doctor.

  Mrs. Murakami allowed no visitors during her husband’s illness. Not even the friends he dined with once a week were admitted into their home. To vent some of the anger provoked by Mr. Murakami’s outrageous behavior, she went out to the garden while the others prepared the body of the recently deceased, and she pulled up the bamboo he had planted at their housewarming. It was real bamboo. Mr. Murakami had purchased the tiny stalks during the Festival of Lanterns, on the night he’d asked for her hand in marriage. Her rage went unnoticed by the employees of the funeral home. Shikibu closed the aluminum shutters on the doors and windows overlooking the garden. Then she tried to calm her mistress. She suggested a bath with wild herbs, and prepared the kimono2 she would wear for the ceremony. It was the lavender kimono Mrs. Murakami had worn to her wedding. On its back were two blue herons in flight. The obi3 chosen to go with it was bright red. While the others prepared her master for the funeral, Shikibu carefully did Mrs. Murakami’s hair. It was a complex style. Mrs. Murakami found it ostentatious and thought that not even her husband’s oldest friends would recognize her done up like that. She worried what they might think. Shikibu consoled her with gentle words and convinced her that her reputation was unblemished, despite the circumstances.

  The funeral was held on a beautiful day. The sun lit the garden with uncommon intensity. The white stones looked whiter than usual and the black stones absorbed the light, taking on a matte finish. Before leaving for the ceremony, Mrs. Murakami walked along one of the garden’s streams and caught sight of the pond out of the corner of her eye. The fins and tails of the koi sparkled as if illuminated from within. She would have liked to stay there, watching the fish, but her husband’s black car was waiting for her out front.

  Mr. Murakami owned a black car produced after the war. It had been assigned to a foreign colonel who’d hardly used it before being unexpectedly transferred out of the country. His friends reproached him for his ostentatious purchase, given the current state of affairs. Nor did they look kindly on doing business with the foreign troops. Mr. Murakami simply smiled at these criticisms and said, in his defense, that the others would soon be emulating him. He was right: his friends quickly abandoned their qualms about displaying their wealth in public.

  Mrs. Murakami had unpleasant memories of that car. Early in their courtship, her future husband would send his driver to her home with expensive offerings. Mrs. Murakami—at that time, still just Izu—would watch him park at their gate from her window. The first was a gift of black orchids grown on the islands west of their country. Her father’s illness had taken a turn for the worse. He spent most of the day in bed. Her suitor was a widower a good deal older than her, but Izu was about to turn twenty-five. The family was in no position to turn him down. It was common knowledge that they were eager to marry off their daughter. Two young men had already asked for her hand, but unfortunate circumstances had prevented both weddings. The first suitor, Akira, had died of rabies. One afternoon he was bitten by a small dog that ran up to him as he left his fiancée’s house. Akira left the wound on his right leg untended. He forgot all about the incident and died two months later from nervous fits. The second suitor, Tutzio, took a trip before the wedding and no one heard from him again. He was going to spend some time in America. He wanted to visit his brothers before marrying, to explore the possibility of moving there with his new wife. The truth was that he wanted to ask forgiveness for the way he’d behaved the last

time he was there. One year later, Izu heard a rumor that, before he had even arrived in San Francisco, his brothers had arranged for him to marry the daughter of a man who owned a chain of Asian restaurants.

  After these failures, Izu decided to forget about marriage and dedicate herself with greater discipline to her studies. She pursued a degree in art history at one of the best universities in the city with the aim of becoming a distinguished critic. She met Mr. Murakami, in fact, while working on a paper. Mr. Murakami had a prestigious, though not particularly large, collection of traditional artwork in his home. Many of the objects dated back ten centuries. The friends he dined with once a week declared part of the house a museum, christening it The Murakami. He had inherited most of the pieces from his father, who got rich the century before by doing business outside the country. His interests, however, were not only commercial: his taste for a wide range of artistic forms could be traced back to his youth. He always found time to see a kabuki4 performance or to spend days in museums and antique shops. He never studied art, but he seemed to have a gift for recognizing valuable pieces on the spot. Because of this aptitude, it was only a few years before specialists began discussing his collection. The businessman instilled in his son a passion for this legacy. He bequeathed the house and all its contents to him. Before his father died, the son promised to continue to build the collection until it was the most important in the country. He was not, however, able to keep his word. Everything was fine while he was married to the honorable and sickly Shosatsu, and even during his years as a widower. But that all changed when he met Izu.

  Izu paid a visit to Mr. Murakami one morning in early December. Though it had not snowed the night before, there was a dryness in the air that usually follows a snowfall. She was accompanied by Etsuko, her faithful servant5. She’d arranged the meeting one week in advance. Mr. Murakami himself had answered the phone. The following Thursday, a few days before the appointment, he told his friends that he’d been pleasantly surprised by the timbre in the voice of the woman who’d asked to see his collection. When he saw her, Mr. Murakami was unusually friendly. He later confessed to thinking he had seen something of his late wife in her. Izu was wearing a traditional dark green kimono with a black obi. It was one of those that had been produced during the Repression.6 It was not decorated with embroidered patterns or reliefs. In that period, tailors developed a remarkable form of craftsmanship: they needed to employ all their talent without ever letting it show. Etsuko stayed two steps behind him, wearing a kimono her mistress had lent to her. Mr. Murakami sent his housekeepers away and showed the pieces himself. He did, however, allow his servant Shikibu to stay. He quietly asked her to attend to anything they might need. The elderly servant greeted Izu with mistrust, but extended her the same courtesy that every guest received. The tour lasted almost four hours. The objects were illuminated by small alcohol lamps set high on the walls. Izu wondered who lit them, since the people in charge of lighting the city’s streets and houses that way had disappeared years earlier. On this occasion, Mr. Murakami was especially detailed in his description of the objects. Afterward he invited his guest to stay for tea. He praised Shikibu’s skill at preparing the drink. While they would not be having a formal tea ceremony, Shikibu had devised a method for drinking tea according to tradition in less than half an hour. She filled a metal pot with water and placed it on the stove. While the water boiled, the elderly servant selected the right cups for the occasion and placed in each a small paper satchel containing the dried leaves of the tea plant. Next, she would take the water off the burner and pour it into the cups, which she would then cover with the same small plates she would later rest them on. She would wait five minutes, and then remove the satchels from the cups. The final step consisted of putting the cups on a ceramic platter, along with a little plate of thinly sliced lemon and a sugar bowl with a silver spoon that complemented the platter. As Izu smiled and declined the invitation, she put away the notebook in which she’d written her thoughts and said a friendly goodbye. Etsuko followed her out of the house. When he met with his friends the following Thursday, Mr. Murakami remarked that he only noticed the servant’s presence as they were saying goodbye.

  In the days that followed, Izu was busy with her assignments for the university, especially the composition of an essay about her recent visit to Mr. Murakami’s collection. Her intention had been to underscore the relationship it established between past and present. She noticed, however, historical biases she felt she should mention, certain imbalances in the selection of work. Perhaps these subtle errors revealed a lack of academic training. She had no choice but to be tough in her appraisal of the criteria applied. It was inexcusable, she thought, that works were selected in certain periods according to dynasty, and simply according to their utilitarian or military value in others. The exhibit seemed thrown together, she declared, according to the whim of someone who suddenly found himself in a position to satisfy any desire he might have.

  Izu’s essay startled her professor. His name was Matsuei Kenzo and his body was chiseled, as if he spent all his free time at the gym or a nearby shojibo.7 Some of the girls at the university were in love with him and flocked to his classes just to be near him. Nonetheless, no one had ever heard rumors of an affair. This made him even more admirable in the eyes of Izu, who would never take a class with anyone whose behavior was not above reproach. She hated the way her classmates would whisper among themselves and make irrelevant comments, but she attended lecture anyway. Master Matsuei Kenzo declared her essay truthful and daring. He told her that such work was uncommon in their country. It was not unusual elsewhere, where aesthetic and intellectual opinions were not necessarily tied to personal matters. It was conceivable, he continued, that somewhere else one could write a scathing review of the work of an artist friend and the friendship would continue as before. Her professor had been so surprised by her paper that he suggested publishing it in an art magazine to which he had ties. If the idea interested her, she should submit an abridged version.

  The cold weather those days suggested that the coming winter would be a harsh one. Izu was in the habit of attending classes in Western attire. On that occasion, she was wearing a beige cashmere sweater, a kilt fastened with a large safety pin, and a pair of flats that could be adorned with a coin. To walk around campus, she put on a long lambswool coat. She was excited about Master Matsuei Kenzo’s comments, and even more so about the idea of publishing her essay. There were two competing factions at the university: the Radical Conservatives, led by the diminutive Master Takagashi, and Adamantly Modern, the group to which Master Matsuei Kenzo belonged. The Radical Conservatives had controlled the department since its creation. They wanted to protect their ancestral past without the incursion of foreign ideas or contemporary techniques for preserving the country’s cultural patrimony. Before meeting Etsuko, who picked her up from the university every day, Izu ran into two of her classmates. Both were slim, had longish hair, and wore glasses with square frames. They were talking about something unusual they’d seen in the Arts and Culture section of the newspaper that morning. It was an article about a man who vomited on famous works of art. The individual would gorge himself on pineapple or strawberries and would then spray the pieces with a layer of yellow or red vomit, depending on the fruit. The law was on his side wherever he committed this act, as it was impossible to prove intentionality. Izu remained standing as she listened to them. Then she told them she was in a rush.

  Izu had a room in her parents’ house where she could dedicate herself to her studies. They’d set up the small space, which had once been used for tea ceremonies, when she started at the university. It looked out over a little garden, which, though lovely, paled in comparison to the one she would enjoy after she married. Sometimes Izu would ask Etsuko to bring her futon8 into the study and would sleep there rather than in the main room, with the rest of the family. A pair of sliding doors connected the study to the garden. These were opened or closed depending on the weather. On warm, sunny days, the doors were left wide open and an intense light would bathe her books, notebooks, and Olivetti typewriter. A little stream passed through the garden. The ground was sloped, however, so fish never spent much time there. She had to settle for the sound of the water and the cool breeze that sometimes filtered in.