Paradais E-Book

Fernanda Melchor

• Herausgeber: Fitzcarraldo Editions
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Inside a luxury housing complex, two misfit teenagers sneak around and get drunk. Franco Andrade, lonely, overweight, and addicted to porn, obsessively fantasizes about seducing his neighbor – an attractive married woman and mother – while Polo dreams about quitting his gruelling job as a gardener within the gated community and fleeing his overbearing mother and their narco-controlled village. Each facing the impossibility of getting what he thinks he deserves, Franco and Polo hatch a mindless and macabre scheme. Written in a chilling torrent of prose by one of our most thrilling new writers, Paradais explores the explosive fragility of Mexican society – fractured by issues of race, class and violence – and how the myths, desires, and hardships of teenagers can tear life apart at the seams.

Leseprobe

‘Fernanda Melchor explores violence and inequity in this brutal novel. She does it with dazzling technical prowess, a perfect pitch for orality, and a neurosurgeon’s precision for cruelty. Paradais is a short inexorable descent into Hell.’ — Mariana Enríquez

‘Melchor evokes the stories of Flannery O’Connor, or, more recently, Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings. Impressive.’ — Julian Lucas, New York Times

‘Fernanda Melchor has a powerful voice, and by powerful I mean unsparing, devastating, the voice of someone who writes with rage and has the skill to pull it off.’ — Samanta Schweblin

Praise for Hurricane Season

‘This is an inquiry into the sexual terrorism and terror of broken men. This is a work of both mystery and critique. Most recent fiction seems anaemic by comparison.’ — Ben Lerner

‘This is the Mexico of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian or Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, where the extremes of evil create a pummeling, hyper-realistic effect. But the “elemental cry” of Ms. Melchor’s writing voice, a composite of anger and anguish, is entirely her own.’ — Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

‘A brutal portrait of small-town claustrophobia, in which machismo is a prison and corruption isn’t just institutional but domestic ... Melchor’s long, snaking sentences make the book almost literally unputdownable, shifting our grasp of key events by continually creeping up on them from new angles. A formidable debut.’ — Anthony Cummins, Observer

PARADAIS

FERNANDA MELCHOR

Translated by

SOPHIE HUGHES

Contents

Title PageEpigraphParadaisAbout the AuthorCopyright

‘What will happen? Nothing will happen. Nothing could possibly happen. What will I do … Fall in love knowing that all is lost and there is no hope.’ — José Emilio Pacheco, Battles in the Desert (translated by Katherine Silver)

‘I hear those sirens scream my name.’ — David Lynch, ‘Up in Flames’

It was all fatboy’s fault, that’s what he would tell them. It was all because of Franco Andrade and his obsession with Señora Marián. Polo just did what he was told, followed orders. Fatboy was completely crazy about her, and Polo had seen first-hand how for weeks the kid had talked about nothing but screwing her, making her his, whatever it took; the same shit over and over like a broken record, his eyes vacant and bloodshot from the alcohol and his fingers sticky with cheesy powder, which the fat pig only ever licked clean once he’d scoffed the whole jumbo bag of crisps. I’ll fuck her like this, he’d drawl, having clambered to his feet at the edge of the dock; I’ll fuck her like this and then I’ll flip her on all fours and I’ll bang her like this, and he’d wipe the drool from his mouth with the back of his hand and grin from ear to ear with those toothpaste ad teeth of his, big, white and straight and also clenched in rage as his gelatinous body wobbled in a crude pantomime of coitus and Polo looked away and laughed feebly and made the most of fatboy being distracted to swipe the bottle, light another cigarette and blow the smoke hard up into the air to repel the ferocious mangrove mosquitos. It was all just fatboy’s idea of a joke, just banter, drunk talk, or that’s what Polo had thought in the beginning, during their first benders down by the river, in the shadiest part of the small wooden platform that ran parallel to the water, just beyond the reach of the poolside lights and where the fig tree’s gnarled shadows kept them hidden from the development’s night watchman and residents, most crucially Franco’s grandparents who, according to Franco, would have a stroke if they caught their ‘little boy’ consuming alcoholic drinks and smoking cigarettes and God knows what other crap; and worse still, in the company of a member of ‘the service’ – as that idiot Urquiza called the development’s employees – the gardener, no less; an out and out scandal, an abuse of trust that would cost Polo his job, which didn’t really bother him anyway because he’d gladly never set foot inside that fucking development again; the problem was that sooner or later he’d have to go home to have it out with his mother, and while that was an awful – not to say downright chilling – prospect, Polo still couldn’t help himself. He could never say no to that lard-ass when he waved at him from his window; he didn’t want to put an end to their drinking sessions down on the dock no matter how much that prick did his head in, no matter how sick Polo was of his bullshit and his endless obsession with the neighbour, who fatboy had fallen for that afternoon in late May when the Maroños drove into the Paradais residential development to pick up the keys to their new home, Señora Marián herself at the wheel of their white Grand Cherokee.

Polo remembered that day well: he had chuckled to himself on seeing the husband relegated to the passenger seat when the front window rolled down with a buzz and a waft of icy air hit his sweaty face. The woman raised her sunglasses, which otherwise completely obscured her eyes and reflected Polo’s face back at him, while she explained who they were and what they were doing there, her lips painted a scandalous red and her bare arms covered in silver bangles that tinkled like wind chimes when Polo finally raised the boom barrier and she thanked him with a wave of her hand. A run-of-the-mill doña, pretty standard, he’d never seen the appeal. Identical to all the other women who lived in the development’s white villas with those fake terracotta roofs: never without their sunglasses, always fresh and glowing behind the tinted windows of their giant SUVs, their hair straightened and dyed, their nails impeccably manicured, but nothing out of this world when you got up close; Christ, nothing to lose your shit over like fatboy had. Honestly, she was nothing special. You’d probably recognize her from the photos; the husband was famous, had his own TV show, and the four of them were always in the celebrity rags: the bald short-ass of a husband in a suit and long-sleeved shirt, even in the baking heat; the two prissy kids; and her, stealing the limelight with her red lips and those sparkling eyes that seemed to smile at you in secret, somehow both playful and malevolent, her eyebrows raised in coquettish complicity, taller than her husband in her platform shoes, one hand on her hip, her shoulder-length hair loose and her neck draped in eye-catching necklaces. That was the word for her: more than pretty she was eye-catching, striking, made to be looked at somehow, with her gym-sculpted curves and her legs bare all the way up to her thighs, dressed either in raw silk skirts or pale linen shorts that set off the bronze glow of her permanently tanned skin. A passable piece of ass, let’s say, each to his own; a decent piece of ass who did a reasonable job of disguising her mileage, the wrinkles and stretchmarks from bearing her two boys – the eldest now all grown up – with creams, designer clothes and that perfectly controlled, metronomic sway of hers, whether she was in heels, sandals or barefoot on her lawn, which made half the residents in Paradais turn to watch her as she passed. Which was exactly what she wanted, right? To be desired, lusted after, to put dirty thoughts into your head. You could tell she loved it, as did her follicly-challenged husband; as far as Polo could see, the guy never took his hands off her, was permanently clutching her waist or stroking her back or feeling up her ass with the smug satisfaction of someone marking his territory and showing off his conquest, while she just smiled away, lapping up the attention, which is exactly why Polo always resisted the urge to look at her, why he always overcame the involuntary twitch he felt in his neck, the almost mechanical pull that demanded he turn his head in the direction of that pert ass as it bounced around the development, mainly because he didn’t want anyone – not her, and not her husband or Urquiza either, but especially not that bitch – to catch him looking at her, peering through squinted eyes, drooling open-mouthed like that retard fatboy gawking at her from afar. It was so obvious he was crazy about her; he was useless at hiding it. Even Polo had noticed, and at that point, in late May, back when the Maroños moved in to number seven, Polo had yet to hang out with Franco Andrade; there had been no mention of any party for that brat Micky, and the pair of them had never exchanged a word. But it was pretty impossible not to notice fatboy when you came across him roaming the cobbled streets of Paradais, always alone, always dragging his feet, with that formidable belly of his, that rosy face covered in whiteheads and those blond curls that made him look ridiculous, like an overfed cherubin; a monstrous manchild whose soulless eyes only lit up when they hit upon Maroño’s wife, who he hadn’t stopped stalking since they moved in. You had to be blind or thick as shit not to see the desperate attempts the poor sucker made just to be near her. Any time his neighbour went out into her front garden to play with her sons – usually in Lycra shorts and a sports bra that ended up pasted to her skin from their water fights – that greasy white boy would fly out of his house to pretend he had to clean his grandparents’ car, a chore he actually despised, but which these days he did without the old pair having to yell at him or threaten to take away his phone or computer like before. And what a coincidence, too, that every time Señora Marián went down to the pool to sunbathe in her swimsuit, fatty fatso would magically appear three minutes later, squeezed into some trunks which he paired with a t-shirt the size of a tent, his attempt to cover the overspilling tub of lard of his belly, and sunglasses to conceal his fixated gaze on the sun-creamed flesh of Señora Marián lying two sunbeds away, oblivious to fatboy’s lubricious sighs and the clumsy prick’s fumbling attempts to rearrange his trunks and conceal his little stiffy. But most pathetic of all were his repeated attempts to befriend Señora Marián’s two children, reedy Andrés and the spoiled cry-baby Miguel, better known among the other residents as Andy and Micky, a grotesque display of tastelessness actually encouraged by the Maroños, who the fuck knows why when they didn’t have a gringo gene between them, the pricks just couldn’t help themselves; and fatboy was even more ridiculous, calling after the in the play area, panting away like a buffalo after the ball that Andy kept dummying, or squirming around Micky, pandering to his every whim, and all to earn the right to be invited to his neighbours’ house for afternoon tea and as such to enjoy, however briefly, the company of the woman of his dreams, queen and star of his filthiest sexual fantasies, the rightful owner of the gloopy torrent that gushed from the fawning creep every single night, sometimes well into the early hours, as he pictured her in his mind’s eye, her blow-job lips, her plump ass, her sumptuous tits; unable to sleep for the longing, the desire that had overwhelmed him since he first saw her step out of her white SUV, the bubbling sensation that reminded him of the champagne his grandparents drank each New Year’s Eve and that fatboy took little sips of whenever they weren’t looking; a dizzy feeling, which in her absence turned to anguish and emptiness, a tectonic rift that opened up in his soul every evening when he would be forced to leave his neighbours’ house because Señor Maroño had arrived home from work and the boys needed to have their baths and finish their homework and Señora Marián would ask him, in her sweetest, warmest voice, to head home, it was late and his grandma and grandpa must be wondering where he was, and she would give him a playful pat on the back before accompanying him to the front door with a smile, and fatboy would have no choice but to go home with his tail between his legs and Señora Marián’s scent – according to him, a mixture of Carolina Herrera, menthol cigarettes and the slightly sour smell of the sweat beads on her cleavage – still wafting around his nostrils, to try, in vain, to fill that growing void with reality TV shows and lewd cartoons that his grandparents disapproved of, and piles of processed biscuits and cakes and huge great bowls of cereal drenched in milk, to then slip away upstairs and lock himself in his air-conditioned room, farting and watching porn on his new laptop that the old pair had bought him for his last birthday and whose storage was already clogged up with smutty films that Franco downloaded from forums and select websites, images of tits, gashes and asses that had actually begun to annoy him, but which he looked at all the same, out of habit, for hours on end. What else could he do to cool the burning passion inside him?