db vast hell

The Vast Hell

Guillermo Martínez

Here is a living Argentine who leaves the literary mold aside because he earned a Ph.D. in mathematical logic and worked in the field for two years. Then an acclaimed novel, The Oxford Murders, and his life direction changed.

Argentina in 1976 experienced political control of the country in order to counter left Wing terrorism. Gross civil rights violations followed. Martinez includes in this story a reference to the disappearance (“desaparecidos”) of people, political enemies of the state. Most often their bodies were never found. At times, shallow graves were discovered to reveal bodies thrown into a hole in similar manner to Nazi Germany’s approach to those who endangered the Reich. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo was formed by mothers who sought the return of their children.

The New York Times  Apr 27, 2009

Guillermo Martinez short story, Vast Hell, appears in the current (April 27th) issue of the New Yorker. It takes place in a small town by the name of Puente Viejo; which means “small bridge’ in Spanish.

The first person narrator, clerking in a grocery store, is having a day so slow that he can hear the “buzzing of the flies”. I think the whole town can hear those flies. He is thinking about a scruffy young man, a stranger, who had pitched a tent at the edge of town. He hit town in the spring…as if unkempt young men were seasonal.

The grocer refers the kid to the newer of two barbers in town, Cervino’s rather than the more remotely located Old Melchor’s. We hear a lot about the rivalry between these two hair-shredders. It’s sort of like a clash of the titans only they’re barbers. Cervino has a hairdressing diploma and uses vegetable extracts. Melchor counters with porno magazines and a T.V. tuned to soccer matches.

But Cervino, shy to the point of virtual non-existence, has his secret weapon wife, “The French Woman”. I guess that just means she’s exotic…we don’t know if she’s actually French…doesn’t matter. She has the habit of appearing in her husband’s shop with limits on the clothing she’s wearing. She checks herself out in the mirror. She looks in your eyes. Do you want to look back?

Here’s where you decide if this story’s for you or not. Have you ever had the experience of looking at someone who was so beautiful…or better…so hypnotic in their effect…that at first you wanted to be around them and then you just wanted to run away because you couldn’t take it any more?

Wow…the male ego…what a piece of work. At first the French Woman makes Cervino’s popular. You never know when she might turn up and put on a show. But she ends up driving customers away. It’s those eyes…like she’s looking down on you…making you feel you’d never be up to the job.

Our now better groomed young man and the French Woman both disappear at the same time.

Crevino says his wife’s gone to the city to look after her sick father. The young man’s tent lies abandoned at the edge of town.

Readers think what they like. But what makes a story is what the characters think. And there’s a nut job of an old harridan, Espinosa’s widow, who’s busying herself digging up the dunes near her house, looking for the bodies.

GM asks a lot of our imagination. He asks you to feel your way into this town’s psychology: feel their boredom, their confusion, their oblivion…and their resulting illusions. Are they your illusions also? Ask yourself that question.

http://cliffordgarstang.com/the-new-yorker-vast-hell-by-guillermo-martinez/

The Vast Hell (Translated, from the Spanish, by Alberto Manguel.)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/04/27/vast-hell

The Short Story Club

Welcome again to the Short Story Club and the premiere (on ShelfActualization.com) of Guillermo Martinez's story " Vast Hell ." (full text of the story can be found here) I first happened upon this story in The New Yorker a few years back, and I remember liking it.  Upon re-reading it now, I realize it is a surprisingly simple story, by which I mean that the story maintains good inertia until the finish, without deviations or tangents or overly-cooked rhetoric.  It's just simple. Martinez is good at lacing into the story "significant moments" that give the story its inertia.  Moments such as "suddenly, it had all become true" on the penultimate page, or "then the inspector shouted that he'd hit something" on the last page.  Simply put, there is no drag to the story.  It moves, and moves quickly. What I love most about the story, though, is the ending (which in my opinion is often the hardest component of a story to execute well).  In this case, "The French Woman returned a few days later: her father had completely recovered.  We never mentioned the boy again.  The tent was stolen as soon as the holiday season started."  The whole story is one huge crescendo (an erotic affair!), and then more crescendo (disappearance of the lovers!), and then even more crescendo (they're dead! buried on the beach!) and then CRESCENDO (there are dead and mutilated bodies all over the beach!), and then that  last line, which is the equivalent, of a big "Never Mind." It's clever.

http://www.shelfactualization.com/2012/05/vast-hell.html