It does not require pathological didactics to see that all these translations after many years do not represent a serious change. real crime The nightmare isn't just what happened, but how it's told, full of self-righteousness and the omission of a woman's perspective.
Santiago Roncalliolo, High heels night, translated. Tomas Pindel, ArtRage 2024
We weren't monsters after all. We may have gone a little overboard. But only for a moment. Just a few days. and a few nights.
it's nothing. Everyone around them was much worse.
It's true: what we did probably doesn't make it into the good manners manuals. Maybe in the crime section of a newspaper, between sex crimes and armed robbery.
These first sentences tell us practically everything. Since we are dealing with a thriller, what happens in it is really brutal and sharp. The heroes of this story, if they were adults, would have to spend years in prison for this. Their “exaggeration” refers to women.
Here are four men who are doing better or worse in life, each separately telling the cameras their version of what happened twenty years ago, in 1992. They were fifteen years old at the time and attended a Catholic boys' school in Lima. Uniforms, masses, austerity, Jesuit director. and two thousand boys.
They live in this better, whiter neighborhood that is surrounded by poor people wherever they go and from where there can be even greater danger when the poor attack the rich. Border guards walk the streets, we understand that these are private police, and houses are surrounded by high walls, which are additionally protected by barbed wire or electricity. Not so long ago, Peru was at war with Ecuador, now it is struggling with communist guerrillas and terror, and violence, including criminal violence, is the order of the day – murders, robberies, rapes, kidnappings for ransom. The police are inept and corrupt.
And this violent environment must be one of the explanations for their crime, because they committed a heinous crime. to a woman. And any additional circumstances should not cover this. Maybe they are trying to suppress it from memory, to diminish it, but they know it now and they knew it then – it was not immoral. And the whole book is an attempt to explain various circumstances written out loud. We have already mentioned the first – Peru. The second was a series of events over which they had no control.
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But let's go further. They are teenagers in a strict school and class leader, they want to be important and admired for once in their life. Can we be surprised that school pariahs end up wanting to shine? Is rebellion natural at this age? And apparently all guys that age have their brains flooded with sperm, so they're basically crazy. Stupid and obsessed with sex – they can neither think nor talk about anything else. What they say is vulgar, disgusting and sexist, but of course, deep down, they may be romantics who dream not of wooing a girl, but of making love with her.
However, the girls defend themselves VirginityAnd besides, where should we look for them? They learn all this from the boyish environment of school and from porn videos, fathers and the general patriarchal atmosphere. The model of true masculinity is military, strong, ruthless, defending the homeland from the “monkeys”, or Ecuadorians, who hates the enemy. Even if this myth is broken, it is hard to part with it, because there is nothing in return but liberal nonsense. A man should be a tough, macho guy. It's kind of an all-encompassing toxic pattern of masculinity. There's no getting away from it, but doesn't that mean you're absolving yourself of responsibility for your actions? Guys will actually get away with it, at most they'll feel a little bad about what they did.
All these boys have difficult family situations for various reasons and are actually still children, unhappy. A common reason is that parents do not know how to talk to them, do not pay enough attention to them and do not understand them, it can also be: the death of one of the parents, alcoholism, PTSD, financial problems, parenting. , that is, the need to take on the role of guardian of one's own parents. One of them hides his sexual orientation, although his friends can easily decipher it. Of course, viral homophobia is also part of this culture.
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And what are the women doing in this novel where their voices are barely heard? Or rather, how do boys see them other than as sex objects for them? Isn't the victim a good person, maybe even despicable, so he wasn't asking for trouble? Women are the first to get up in the morning, the last to go to sleep, but they really can't help anyone. They depend on men and obey their opinion.
On the other hand, they are known to be better and smarter than men. And they – this is not surprising in such a culture – skilled manipulators. Ultimately, who is responsible for pulling the trigger on the guy? She is a young girl, but you can't hold her hand. All he has to do is to offer the screaming young man in love what he expects from him. Boys may behave stupidly, but they are active and take risks. Girls are quiet, but in the end they know what they want and can achieve it. And the not-so-attractive middle-aged woman who enjoys the position of teacher is restrictive, teaching students who provoke her – yes, she is the monster in their story. (He who taught and never said in his life: what will make you laugh at the end? Maybe we all laugh? – let him throw the first stone).
Yes, after all, these better and smarter women are to blame for everything. And whose side are we on? Told this way – from the perspective of four men reminiscing about their childhood days – the story is sure to encourage understanding and at least some sympathy. However, there is almost no sympathy and understanding for the victim.
Teenagers, the low end of the male herd, have tried to live up to the ideals of toxic masculinity for once in their lives. And who knows, maybe this was not the most beautiful, unforgettable moment in their biography. After all, they weren't pins that are easy to lose and don't matter, but special ones that are remembered because they were crushed. At least, that's what the person who is the demiurge of this situation thinks and is blackmailing his colleagues into telling and recording this news. Maybe the others have already reformed? Are they ready to seriously confront the past?
A man who became a lawyer, from a liberal and less oppressive family, where the father was pathologically cheating on his wife, realizes this good version of masculinity – a faithful and good husband and a caring father who does not resort to violence. . A real man is worthy and does not break his word! But he didn't understand much either. And did the author understand? After all, the narrative belongs to the characters, it gives them a voice, and what conclusions we draw from it depends on us. Are we going to be like the GW editorial team, which publishes Marcin Katzky's confessions because they seem terrifying and moving at the same time, or is it already obvious to us that something is wrong here?
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Do we not need pathological didactics to see that after many years all these translations do not mean a serious change. real crime The nightmare isn't just what happened, but how it's told, full of self-righteousness and the omission of a woman's perspective. Whether the author does this consciously or not is of little consequence to me.
The publisher publishes a book with blurbs, of course, by men – Wojciech Chmielarczy and Lukasz Orbitowski. We learn from them that this is a book about “an out-of-control prank. About revenge, parents, first love, violence, dreams and the tragedy of loss. About friendship, mistakes and love. Such boyish nostalgia. I understand, it should be short, trivial and ad-like. A popular novel, but written – although the plot is too thickly stitched in places – an amazingly well-written, gripping, thriller! I don't want to discourage you from reading it, because I enjoyed reading it, but we don't buy into such narratives uncritically anymore, do we?
(tags translated)Latin America