In this story, Pepe “el tira”, cousin of Kafka’s Josefina the singer of the mouse people, search for a criminal. A rat who kills rats. But rats do not kill rats, or that at least that is the doxa.
The story is perfect for me. From the parallel drawn with Kafka, starting in the same way as his story, but with a twist, a subjective twist and a bend on the perspective. Where K says “Our singer is called Josephine. Anyone who has not heard her does not know the power of song...” R takes us into the thick skin of a rat (a clearly south american rat, with mexican or chilean accent), trying to look through his eyes: “My name is Jose, but the people who knows me calls me Pepe, and some, mostly the ones that do not know me so well or are not familiar with me, they call me Pepe el Tira...”
After 5 pages following the killer in the dirty and dark sewers, sleeping between rats to keep the warmth, and tell us about the life of the poor and hard working rat people, he finds the killer. He also finds the corpse of a baby rat, killed of starvation. When killer and cop are in front of each other they talk, they fight, one dies. Pepe brings the corpse back to the colony. His supervisors talk with him, he sleeps, the Queen rat ask for him. They talk about Josefina. He ask why the killer didn’t cut the throat of the baby rat. The Queen sketches an answer. Finally the Queen rat says: “We should remember that he was crazy, it was a teratology. Rats do not kill rats.”
He tries to keep on with his cop life, forget the killer. One night, before going after some weasels (a secure death is waiting for him) he reminds us: “Is already too late for everything [...]. In which moment it became so late? In Josephine’s time? One thousands years ago? Three thousands years ago? Weren’t we, maybe, condemned from the beginning of our species?”
So, what has been done here? A swiss clock that detonates an existential bomb. On one hand, the game with K is perfect. It reveals a clear understanding of what K was doing, what Borges was doing, what Homer was doing, and plays along those lines. In this short story B states, explicitly, that the story is to be read as part of a history, he wanted it to be read as part of the canon. And the game is perfectly played. On the other hand, the story appeals my guts, the most inner part of my soul, of my fears, and my sadness. The pain of see rats killing rats, of see rats (in africa maybe, latin america certainly) starving and do nothing about it, the sensation that we are crazy, alone, and that there is no cure. No one will cure me, no one will cure the state, the world. We are going to keep killing each other till the end of the times. But rats do not kill rats.
Post Scriptum: I sent this to Foncea, who added on his always clear way, something I haven't found out in the story, and is the secret of the metaphor: "The rats are latin american, yes, without a doubt, but not all the rats are cops, and not all the cops work in homicides, and not all the homicides cops go to the encounter with the predator armed just with his teeth. Just some of them, always some of them. Bolaño is one of them..."
Photo by Manrus
No comments:
Post a Comment