Little Flower (never dies) – Iosi Havilio
Denoël – €13
www.denoel.fr
Everything came together irreversibly. When I opened my eyes again, I saw a knife rack behind the bar. An exchange of smiles pushed me into the kitchen. Guillermo was still dancing, unperturbed. I grabbed a long, sharp-looking knife, hid it down my leg and returned to my seat. I waited for Guillermo to finish spinning around, and when he came face to face with me, I plunged the steel blade right into his chest. As on the evening when the shovel entered his neck, it was the sound of goring flesh that impressed me most. In short, dull and explosive, like the wave breaking on the rock (p.43).
The narrator José has just lost his job, and finds himself – before our very eyes – somewhat deprived and tired, between his wife Laura and his daughter Antonia. His relationship with his family is normal, but nothing more. No outbursts of irrational passion, just ordinary lambda. One Thursday evening, the day matters, José decides to go and meet his neighbor, a man named Guillermo, to borrow a garden spade. There he meets a jazz fanatic, erudite and fascinating, with whom he makes a habit of chatting for hours on end over a good bottle of wine. That Thursday evening, in a totally meaningless and harmless way, he takes the garden spade and cold-bloodedly murders Guillermo. But the next day, his neighbor resurfaces and is there again, as if the previous day’s event had never happened. The storyline is born, between the ordinary chronicles of everyday life and the upbeat, cruel festivities of Thursday night, as José kills his neighbor every Thursday night in an exponential creative and visual frenzy.
Author Iosi is a young Argentine novelist, born in 1974 in Buenos Aires. It’s important to remember that fantasy is a literary genre that originated in Argentina. In Little FlowerIosi teaches magical realism through “the normal story of a normal guy”, interspersed with unexpected and irrational events. The most unsettling aspect of this novel is Guillermo’s multiple resurrections, which don’t hold on to anything, and are to be regarded as minor, unimportant events – almost. What is noticeable, however, is the narrator’s resistance to being and remaining. This constancy and immutability in persistence. During our interview with the author, he formally told us: “The best literature begins by washing the dishes, raking the garden or taking the rubbish out onto the sidewalk”. Through this binary coding, major/minor, between an excess of magical information and everyday banality, between leaving the margins and staying at the center, between creative improvisation and structure… Petite Fleur is a modern masterpiece, brilliantly conceived to be an intuitive, wonderful and colorful source of inspiration.
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(I had begun translating the author’s answers from Spanish into French, but the approximation of the rendering, of the “music” of the words, made me prefer a reworking of Iosi Havilio’s phrasing in his native language).
Elisa Palmer. Your book is an integral part of the fantasy movement. Can you tell me what drives you in this direction?
Iosi Havilio. Escribir es siempre un hecho fantástico, así la gente vuelva o no de la muerte. La literatura de lo real es una idea tan estúpida como el de suponer cosmogonías planas. Todo el realismo occidental se funda en una gran fantasía: la resurrección. Ocurrió o no ocurrió, poco importa. Nos pasamos la vida volviendo de distintos tipos de muertes, más grandes más pequeñas, más o menos definitivas, dolorosas, placenteras.
Elisa Palmer. The story seems absolutely real, then descends into something impossible, without disturbing or disrupting the story. Why did you use this method? What did you want to say?
Iosi Havilio. En el origen de este novelita hubo una relectura de Crimen y Castigo y en particular de la escena en que Raskólnikov mata a la vieja y al deambular posterior por las calles, en lo inadmisible de ese acto, de ese asesinato. En su deriva, la vieja para Raskólnikov sigue más viva que nunca, no puede quitársela de la cabeza. No puede ser cierto, no pude haber hecho lo que hice… y si no murió? La materialidad es solo una parte (una parte indivisible) de todas las otras que hacen al misterio de la vida. En todo caso, la resurrección del vecino es acá una sorpresa menor, anecdótica (tan cifrada como inesperada), la perturbación más profunda viene desde antes, de la resistencia del narrador, de la dificultad por ser y permanecer.
Elisa Palmer. Is everything falling apart around the main character? Or does nothing really change? What do you think?
Iosi Havilio. Las circunstancias empujan al narrador a apasionarse por la experiencia, una experiencia que a priori lo condena y paraliza y que habiendo tocado fondo se renueva. Él viene a ser el primero en resurgir… Los finales (nuestros finales) son siempre distintos a los finales imaginados. Cuánto más pasión por la experiencia (en el sentido de comprometido y atormentado) más grandes los alcances de la transformación.
Elisa Palmer. What does the figure of the housewife represent in your book?
Iosi Havilio. Las tareas domésticas reclaman al cuerpo en lugar de las palabras. El ciclo humano de todos los días marca el ritmo. En ese sentido, el género no significa nada. Existe, por supuesto, un contexto, un modelo, una serie de convenciones retrógradas que distinguen hombre de mujer, trabajo afuera del trabajo en casa, realidad de ficción, pero solo se trata de conformidades para no entrar en estado de desesperación. La mejor literatura empieza por ponerse a lavar los platos, rastrillar el jardín o sacar la basura a la vereda.
Elisa Palmer. Murdering your neighbor is becoming more and more challenging and enjoyable, why?
Iosi Havilio. El regocijo de reconocerse capaz de lo extremo, de la improvisación, de la creatividad y la crueldad. También el regocijo por saberse cumpliendo con una misión desconocida que se presenta como inevitable. La alegría de pisarle los talones al origen del destino.
Elisa Palmer. What’s in it for the fantasy current?
Iosi Havilio. El desafío (y ya no solo en la escritura, en el trabajo literario, sino en cualquier orden de la experiencia vital) pasa por desacomodar los términos, las ideas, cuestionar las formas dadas. Rastrear por ejemplo, lo fantástico, lo inexplicable, en la rutina y las repeticiones, lo banal, en los hechos que llamos fantásticos.
Thanks again to Iosi Havilio.
Elisa Palmer
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