License, please, police conversations
Stop, stop, stop, military post conversations
Papers, passports, where are you from, why are you here, ere, Border Patrol conversations
§ LEAVES ECHOES
Whooosh, whoosh, leaf falling
Crrp, crrp, leaf crunching
§ ROCK ECHOES
(Silence)
§ HIGHWAY ECHOES
Fffffffffffffhhh, cars driving past on highways
Fffhhhhhhhhhhhh, cars we hear from inside the motel
§ TELEVISION ECHOES
Not allowed!
§ TRAIN ECHOES
Rishktmmmmbbbbggggeeeeek, train arriving in station
Tractractracmmmmmshhhhhh, train leaving station
§ DESERT ECHOES
Tac, took, tac, our footsteps in desert
Waaaaahhhh, nooooo, ahhhhhh, me crying
Wwwwwwzzzzzzzzz, wind blowing across a dry lake
Shrrrrrr, sssssssss, hsssssss, sss, hhhhh, dust-clouds appearing and disappearing
Waaaaahhhh, nooooo, ahhhhhh, me crying
Tac, took, tac, shrrrrrr, sssssssss, walking across a dry lake, footsteps on dust
Kikikiki…kuk…kuk…kuh, eagles flying
Slap, flap, blap, plap, wings flapping, slapping
Tssssss, fsssss, wind through saguaros
Creek, croook, cccccrrrr, abandoned train car, metal creaks
Aaaeeee, aeeeeee, oooooh, wind-cries
Waaaaahhhh, nooooo, ahhhhhh, me crying
§ STORM ECHOES
Brrrrrrhhhh, krrrrrrrhhhh, thunder far away, storm coming
Zlap, boooom, rrrrtoooom, thunder all around
Tictictictictictictictic, rainstorm
Tictictic…tictictic…tictictic, less rain
§ TOOTH ECHOES
Crrrakk, shmlpff, blurpm, my tooth cracking and coming out slowly
DOCUMENT
This is Ground Control. Calling Major Tom.
Checking sound. One, two, three.
This is Ground Control. You copy me, Major Tom?
This is the last recording I’m making for you, Memphis, so listen carefully. You and Mama will leave tomorrow morning at sunrise from the house in the Dragoon Mountains, in Apacheria, and will take an airplane back home. This recording is just for you, Memphis. If anyone else is listening to it, including you, Mama, it’s not for you. But you probably have already listened to most of it, Ma. After all, it’s your recorder. Maybe I should say now, I’m sorry I used your recorder without permission. And I’m sorry that I messed up the order in your box. It was a mistake, an accident. Also, I’m sorry I lost your map, Ma, and took your book about the lost children, and then went and lost it, too. I left it on the train that took us from Lordsburg to Bowie. Maybe someone will find it one day and read it. And maybe a train was the right place for it to end up. At least I recorded some parts of it in this recording, so not everything is lost. I know you also recorded other bits, so perhaps we have almost all of it on tape. I’m not trying to make excuses, I really am sorry, and also, I don’t mind if you listened to my recording, just as long as you keep it safe for Memphis. As long as you keep it safe and let her listen to it one day, when she’s older. Maybe when she turns ten. Okay, deal, yes? Okay.
This is the last bit of tape I’m recording for you, Memphis, because this is where the story ends. You always want to know how all stories end. Today is the day it ends, at least for now, for a long time. After Ma and Pa found us in Echo Canyon, a bunch of park rangers came with space blankets to cover us both, and brought apple juice and granola bars, and they carried us back across the canyon to a little office full of posters of bears and trees and some really bad hand-drawings of Apaches. Someone drove Pa to where he’d left our car, and when he came back, he and Ma carried us to it, though we didn’t really need to be carried, and Ma climbed into the backseat with us, held us tight, kissed our heads, and rubbed our backs while Pa drove slowly, very slowly, to the house in the Dragoon Mountains. The house is a rectangle made of stone, with two bedrooms, and a living room and an open kitchen. It has a front porch and a back porch, a tin roof painted green, and big windows with shutters to keep the light and heat of the desert out.
Today, at sunrise, you and Ma will wake up and leave. I have to keep this last recording short so you don’t wake up before I finish. And I have to put the recorder back into Mama’s bag before you both leave, so she can take it with her. She’ll take it back with her, and then, one day, when you’re older, Memphis, you will listen to this recording. You will also look at all the photographs I put neatly inside my box, labeled Box VII, which Ma will also take back with her because I just left it on top of all your stuff, basically bags and backpacks, which she lined up next to the door of the house, ready for when you have to head out. Pa and I will be sleeping inside the house when the car service comes to pick you up to take you to the airport. Pa will be in his room and I will be in my new room.
After we got lost, and then were found, I think Ma and Pa did think about staying together, not separating. I think they tried, maybe even tried hard. When we first got to the house after we’d been found again, we tried to go back to normal again. We all painted walls and listened to the radio together; I helped you write out the echoes we’d collected on little pieces of paper and put them in your box, Box VI, which you wanted Pa to keep. Another day, we helped Ma repair a window and also a lamp, we went grocery shopping with Pa and barbecued dinner with him, and we even played Risk, two nights in a row, you in charge of rolling dice, and me and Ma fighting over Australia.
But I think in the end, it was impossible for them. Not because they didn’t like each other but because their plans were too different. One was a documentarian and the other a documentarist, and neither one wanted to give up being who they were, and in the end that is a good thing, Ma told me one night, and said someday we will both understand it better.
Remember I told you one day, which seems kind of long ago now though it isn’t, that I wasn’t sure if I was going to be a documentarist or a documentarian, and that I didn’t tell Ma and Pa about it at first because I didn’t want them to think I was trying to copy them or had no ideas of my own but also because I didn’t want to have to choose if I’d be a documentarian or a documentarist? And then I thought maybe I could be both? I kept on thinking about that, about how to be both.
I thought this, though it was all a bit confused: maybe, with my camera, I can be a documentarian, and with this recorder where I’ve been recording, which is Mama’s, I can be a documentarist and document everything else my pictures couldn’t. I thought about writing stuff down in a notebook for you to read one day, but you are a bad reader still, level A or B, still read everything backward or in a mess, and I have no idea when you’ll finally learn to read properly, or if you ever will. So I decided to record sound instead. Also, writing is slower and reading is slower, but at the same time listening is slower than looking, which is a contradiction that cannot be explained. Anyway, I decided to record, which was faster, although I don’t mind slow things. People usually like fast things. I don’t know what kind of person you will be in the future, a person who likes slow things or one who likes fast things. I kind of hope you are the type of person who likes slow things, but I can’t rely on that. So I made this recording and took all those pictures.
When you look at all the pictures and listen to this recording, you’ll understand many things, and eventually maybe you’ll even understand everything. That’s also why I decided to be both a documentarian and a documentarist—so you could get at least two versions of everything and know things in different ways, which is always better than just one wa
y. You’ll know everything, and slowly start to understand it. You’ll know about our lives when we were with Mama and Papa, before we left on this trip, and about the time we were traveling together toward Apacheria. You’ll know the story of when we first saw some lost children boarding an airplane, and how it broke us all into pieces, especially Mama because all her life was, was looking for lost children. She got even more broken one day, when we were all back together again in the house in the Dragoon Mountains, because she got a phone call from that friend of hers, Manuela, who had been looking for her two girls who’d got lost in the desert, and her friend told her that her daughters had been found in the desert, but they weren’t alive anymore. For days Ma hardly spoke, didn’t get out of bed, took showers that lasted hours, and all the while, I wanted to tell her that maybe the girls who had been found were not her friend’s daughters, because I knew for a fact that many children had telephone numbers stitched on their clothes when they had to cross the desert.
I knew this, and you’ll also know this, because you and I were with the lost children, too, though only for a little while, and that is what they told us. We met them, and were there with them, tried to be brave like them, traveling alone on trains, crossing the desert, sleeping on the ground under the huge sky. You have to always remember how, for a while, I lost you and you lost me, but we found each other again, and carried on walking in the desert, until we found the lost children inside an abandoned train car, and we thought they were maybe the Eagle Warriors that Pa had been telling us about, but who knows. You have to know all of this, and remember it, Memphis.
When you get older, like me, or even older than me, and tell other people our story, they’ll tell you it’s not true, they’ll say it’s impossible, they won’t believe you. Don’t worry about them. Our story is true, and deep in your wild heart and in the whirls of your crazy curls, you will know it. And you’ll have the pictures and also this tape to prove it. Don’t you lose this tape or the box with the pictures. You hear me, Major Tom? Don’t you lose anything, because you’re always losing everything.
This is Ground Control speaking. Can you hear me?
Put your helmet on now. And remember to count: ten, nine, eight, commencing countdown and engines on. Check ignition. And, seven, six, five, four, three, and now we’re moonwalking.
This is Ground Control. Can you hear me?
Do you remember that song? And our game? After the moonwalks comes the part we love the most. Two, one: and you’re launched into space. You’re up in space, floating in a most peculiar way. Up there, the stars look really different. But they’re not. They’re the same stars, always. You might feel lost one day, but you have to remember that you’re not, because you and I will find each other again.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I began writing this novel in the summer of 2014. Over time, a large number of people and institutions have helped it come into being. I am deeply thankful to all, but I especially want to thank the following:
The Akademie der Künste, in Berlin, which offered me a fellowship and residence in the summer of 2015, and where, after a year of note-taking, I finally began typing.
Shakespeare & Co., in Paris, and especially Sylvia Whitman, who in the summer of 2016 generously offered me a roof and bed above the bookstore, where I was able to devote many hours to the manuscript.
The Beyond Identity program, at the City College of New York, where I was a visiting fellow between the fall of 2017 and the spring of 2018, and thanks to which I had time to finish and edit the manuscript.
Philip Glass, who exists, and whose Metamorphosis I listened to approximately five thousand times while writing this novel.
My agents and sisters-in-arms, Nicole Aragi and Laurence Laluyaux, as well as their wonderful assistants, Grace Dietshe and Tristan Kendrick Lammar.
My brilliant editors: Anna Kelly, at Fourth Estate; and Robin Desser, at Knopf, as well as Annie Bishai—the best editorial assistant I have worked with.
My editor and longtime interlocutor at Coffee House Press, Chris Fischbach.
My friends—generous early readers during different stages of the manuscript—N. M. Aidt, K. M. Alcott, H. Cleary, B. H. Edwards, J. Freeman, L. Gandolfi, T. Gower, N. Gowrinathan, R. Grande, R. Julien, C. MacSweeney, P. Malinowski, E. Rabasa, D. Rabasa, L. Ribaldi, S. Schweblin, Z. Smith, A. Thirlwell, and J. Wray.
Miquel and Ana.
And my parents, Marta and Cassio.
WORKS CITED
(Notes on Sources)
Like my previous work, Lost Children Archive is in part the result of a dialogue with many different texts, as well as with other nontextual sources. The archive that sustains this novel is both an inherent and a visible part of the central narrative. In other words, references to sources—textual, musical, visual, or audio-visual—are not meant as side notes, or ornaments that decorate the story, but function as intralinear markers that point to the many voices in the conversation that the book sustains with the past.
References to sources appear in different ways along the novel’s narrative scheme:
1. The fundamental “bibliography” appears within the boxes that travel in the car with the family (Box I–Box V).
2. In the parts narrated by a female first-person narrator, all sources used are either cited and quoted or paraphrased and referenced.
3. In the parts narrated by the boy first-person narrator, works previously used by the female first-person narrator are “echoed,” while others are quoted or paraphrased and referenced.
4. Some references to other literary works are spread nearly invisibly across both narrative voices as well as the Elegies for Lost Children and are meant to appear as thin “threads” of literary allusion.
One such thread alludes to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, wherein the technique of shifting narrative viewpoints via an object moving in the sky was, I believe, first invented. I repurpose the technique in point-of-view shifts that occur when the eyes of two characters “meet” in a single point in the sky, by looking at the same object: airplane, eagles, thunderclouds, or lightning.
5. In the parts narrated by a third-person narrator, Elegies for Lost Children, sources are embedded and paraphrased but not quoted or cited. The Elegies are composed by means of a series of allusions to literary works that are about voyages, journeying, migrating, etc. The allusions need not be evident. I’m not interested in intertextuality as an outward, performative gesture but as a method or procedure of composition.
The first elegies allude to Ezra Pound’s “Canto I,” which is itself an “allusion” to Homer’s Book XI of the Odyssey—his “Canto I” is a free translation from Latin, and not Greek, into English, following Anglo-Saxon accentual verse metrics, of Book XI of the Odyssey. Book XI of Homer’s Odyssey, as well as Pound’s “Canto I,” is about journeying/descending into the underworld. So, in the opening Elegies about the lost children, I reappropriate certain rhythmic cadences as well as imagery and lexicon from Homer/Pound, in order to establish an analogy between migrating and descending into the underworld. I repurpose and recombine words or word-pairings like “swart/night,” “heavy/weeping,” and “stretched/wretched”—all of which derive from lines in “Canto I.”
Sources in t
he Elegies embedded in the third-person narrative follow a similar scheme as above, and include the following works: Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad; The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot; The Children’s Crusade, by Marcel Schwob; “El dinosaurio,” by Augusto Monterroso; “The Porcupine,” by Galway Kinnell; Pedro Páramo, by Juan Rulfo; Duino Elegies, by Rainer Maria Rilke; and The Gates of Paradise, by Jerzy Andrzejewski (translated by Sergio Pitol into Spanish, and retranslated by me into English).
Below is a list of exact lines or words alluded to from each work, roughly in the order in which they appear in the Elegies sections of the novel:
Ezra Pound, “Canto I”
. And then went down to the ships
. Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
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