Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482)

by Vollmann, William T.

  The incarnation of Ilamatecuhtli— Ibid., p. 191.

  “Well, you have your butterflies . . . the age of seventy.”— Altered and expanded from Haslip, p. 160.

  THE CEMETERY OF THE WORLD

  Epigraph: “Woe is me, Llorona! . . .”— Margit Frenk et al., comp. & ed., El Colegio de México, Cancionero Folklórico de México, tomo 2: Coplas del Amor Desdichado y Otras Coplas de Amor, p. 122 (3646, “La Llorona,” trans. by WTV).

  The two possible origins of the plague— I have invented both of these. However, my description of the old volumes in the Archives of the Ayumiento de Veracruz (from which, thanks to translations by Teresa McFarland, I did garner a few rhetorical flourishes, together with the fact of the conversion of the municipal slaughterhouse into a barracks in 1648) is based on examination of them in January 2011, and in particular on the following: (1) Año 1608–1699, caja 01, vol. 1. (2) Caja 3, año de 1804; libro n 98 tomo 5. [As you can see, the cataloguing is inconsistent.]

  Founding of Villarica, and the date of its removal to Veracruz; situation of the garrison, and a couple of other such details— Two Hearts, One Soul: The Correspondence of the Condesa de Galve, 1688–96, ed. & trans. Meredith D. Dodge and Rick Hendricks (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), p. 159n. In this place we are told that “lack of city walls made the [new] settlement vulnerable to strong north winds,” but in Veracruz I was informed that the city was “the cemetery of the world” for at least two centuries in part because of the fetor within its walls, so for this story I chose to follow local knowledge, or legend, and mention walls. Veracruz may or may not have been erected directly over an Indian town. A conquistador who was there locates it “a mile and a half from this fortress-like place called Quiahuitzlan” (Bernal Díaz [del Castillo], The Conquest of New Spain, trans. J. M. Cohen [New York: Penguin, 1963], p. 114).

  Visual reckoning method when entering Veracruz Harbor— “In the old days navigators got into Vera Cruz by the picturesque means of steering so that the tower of the Church of San Francisco covered the tower of the cathedral . . . How the vast, shining wealth of Mexico poured into Europe through this port . . . [!]”— Edith O’Shaughnessy [Mrs. Nelson O’Shaughnessy], Diplomatic Days (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1917), p. 12.

  The Marqueses del Valle were Cortés’s descendants, and for some years they ran the port of Veracruz.

  Miscellaneous descriptions of Cempoala, the Casa de Cortés and Veracruz generally, including of the “haunted” houses (which were in fact pointed out to me as such)— From notes taken during that same visit in 2011.

  The life and goddess-avatars of Malinche— Information from Anna Lanyon, Malinche’s Conquest (Crows Nest, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 1999).

  Doña Marina’s statement that “she would rather serve her husband and Cortés than anything else in the world”— Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico 1517–1521, ed. Genaro García, trans. A. P. Maudslay (New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1956), p. 68. This is another translation of the Díaz text cited earlier.

  Legends about La Llorona and other ghosts in Veracruz— From stories told to me by taxi drivers, etcetera, in 2011. Here is a fine one: A driver said that once he was driving to Cardel in his taxi and he saw a woman in a white dress standing at the edge of the road. She waved him down and asked him to give her a ride, all the while keeping her face hidden from him. La Llorona was frequently spoken of in these parts. She was said to wear a long white dress. She had long black hair down to her ankles and a horrible horse’s head. So the driver drove past the strange woman, who was likewise dressed in white, then made a U-turn in hopes of seeing her from the front. At once she disappeared.— “What would she do if you’d said: Oh, you’re so beautiful! and kissed her face?”— “The man would die at once,” he said, bored. “Did you ever see the ghost of Malinche or Cortés?”— “Not around here.”— “What about the old gods?”— “Not in this zone. But up at Cempoala, if you go into the ruins, there’s a big circle of stones, and if you stand at the middle of the circle and stare into the sun, the sun god’s energy will pour into you and cure all your problems.”

  The castle— I asked a man about ghosts, and he said: “Oh, yes, La Llorona can be heard in the castle. At three or four in the morning, you can see swings moving in this playground, if no one is there. You can feel them coming out to follow you. There are other presences in other buildings, but the castle is the worst.”

  Description of La Llorona after Ricardo feeds her the jade bead— After an illustration in Rubén Morante López, A Guided Tour: Xalapa Museum of Anthropology, trans. Irene Marquina (Xalapa: Gobierno del Estado de Veracuz de Ignacio de la Llave y Universidad Veracruzana, 2004), p. 147.

  The golden parting gifts from La Llorona— Based on real Aztec goldwork on display in the Baluarte. Ordinarily they would have been melted down by the Spaniards, but the galleon sank. An octopus fisherman found them in a wreck, and went to jail for not disclosing them.

  TWO KINGS IN ZIÑOGAVA

  Epigraph: “But what does the social order do . . . ?”— Jan Potocki, The Manuscript Found in Saragosa, trans. Ian Maclean (New York: Penguin Classics, 1996 repr. of 1995 ed.; orig. French ms. ca. 1812), p. 517.

  Common Spanish reference (ca. 1625) to an elegant, white-dressed black woman as a mosca en leche, a “fly in milk”— Herman L. Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-Creole Consciousness, 1570–1640 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), p. 19.

  A few details of religious coercion and sacramental fees are taken (perhaps not entirely accurately, since Veracruz is not in the valley of Mexico) from Charles Gibson, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico 1519–1810 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1964). Some descriptions of masters’ and mistresses’ cruelty to slaves are derived from period woodcuts reproduced in Benjamin Nuñez, with the assistance of the African Bibliographic Center, Dictionary of Afro-Latin American Civilization (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980).

  Description of the aventurine cask— From information in the Condesa de Galve, p. 143. Aventurine was a kind of glass containing scintillating particles.

  Description and history of San Juan de Ulúa— After a visit there in 2011, and information from Teresa del Rosario Ceballos y Lizama, Una visita al pasado de San Juan de Ulúa [contains abbreviated English trans.] (Veracruz?: self-published?, 2010). For the legends of Chucho el Roto and the Mulata de Córdoba, see p. 69. In English the island’s name is often spelled “Ulloa.”

  “Mestiza, goddess of the orient . . .”— Frenk, p. 376 (5182, estrofa suelta, trans. by Teresa McFarland and WTV).

  Franciscan desire to create a Kingdom of the Gospels in Mexico— Alicia Hernández Chávez, Mexico: A Brief History, trans. Andy Klatt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006; orig. Spanish-lang. ed. 2000), p. 38.

  “Stretch out your arms, negrita . . .”— Invented by WTV.

  Benito Juárez: “I know that the rich and the powerful . . .”— Smart, p. 355 (said in 1865).

  The Blue Range in Moquí Province (believed in from end of seventeenth century until the nineteenth)— Luis Weckmann, of the Mexican Academy of History, The Medieval Heritage of Mexico, trans. Frances M. López-Morillas (New York: Fordham University Press, 1992), p. 39.

  The Amazon of Ziñogava; characteristics of Amazons; claim of the Tarascans— Ibid., pp. 51, 49.

  The skeleton hand— A not entirely uncommon Gothic element. For instance, I once read an English tale about a woman who was murdered by a rejected suitor on her wedding night. No one could prove anything against the man; the body had disappeared, and so had he. Her skeleton was found years later; her sister asked that the hand be cut off, in case it could bring about justice. One day the murderer came into the bar where it was displayed (yes, in a velvet-lined glass box, although in this version the velvet was black, not red,
which I thought better for a Mexican setting), stared at it in horror, approached the glass box, touched it, and blood appeared on his fingers.

  The crocodile “bullfights” of Dorantes de Carranza (ca. 1593)— Weckmann, p. 122.

  “Much do I care for my María . . .”— Frenk, p. 121 (3636, “¡Ay!, qué diantre de María,” trans. by WTV).

  The head’s magic power— This may not touch your belief, but in 2011 I saw for myself how some pyramidal little tugboat could pull a long, many-smokestacked Rickmers freighter right past San Juan de Ulúa and out of Veracruz Harbor without seeming effort.

  First arrival of Cortés at San Juan de Ulúa— Bernal Díaz, The Conquest of New Spain, p. 69. On the next page this conquistador describes the future site of Veracruz as “no level land, nothing but sand-dunes.”

  Colors and significances of ancient Mexica directions— Zarur and Lovell, pp. 98–99.

  “they are dead; they will not live . . .”— Isaiah 26:14.

  Description of the Queen with “her eyes squinted shut like a corpse’s”— After an illustration in López, p. 153. “The closed eyes and the open mouth of this female figure indicate that she is dead.”

  The two fountains of Huasteca and the magic mountain with the petrifying river— Weckmann, pp. 40, 39.

  The shrub called hueloxóchitl—Lieut. R.W.H. Hardy, R.N., Travels in the Interior of Mexico, in 1825, 1826, 1827, and 1828 (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1829), p. 533. I have Mexicanized the orthography of Hardy’s huelosóchil.

  “engordar el cochino”— Christoph Rosenmüller, Patrons, Partisans and Palace Intrigues: The Court Society of Colonial Mexico, 1702–1710 (Calgary, Alberta: University of Calgary Press, 2008), p. 45. This may be an anachronism, since the phrase was current in 1710, but then again perhaps it was in use a half-century earlier; therefore, dear reader, please let me off the hook.

  Punishment of concubinage— Weckmann, p. 455.

  “Sad is my heart, negrita . . .”— Frenk et al, p. 5 (2773a, “El Siquisirí,” trans. by Teresa McFarland and WTV).

  Former name for San Juan de Ulúa: Chalchiuhcuecan— Francisco López de Gómara, Cortés: The Life of the Conqueror by His Secretary, trans. and ed. Lesley Byrd Simpson from 1552 ed. (Berkeley: University of California, 1964), p. 54.

  THE WHITE-ARMED LADY

  Epigraph: “For the white-armed lady . . .”— Snorri Sturluson [attributed; but the true compiler’s identity is uncertain], The Poetic Edda, trans. Lee M. Hollander, 2nd. ed., rev. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962; orig. texts 9th–14th cent.), p. 161 (stanza 7; slightly “retranslated” by WTV).

  WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS

  Kvitsøy is an island about twenty kilometers northwest of Stavanger.

  “Better is the end of a thing than its beginning.”— Ecclesiastes 7:8.

  “To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? . . .”— Luke 13:20–21.

  The flower called guldå— Galeopsis speciosa Leppeblomstfam.

  “I never knew you . . .”—Matthew 7:23

  A valurt-flower—Symphytum officinale Rubladfam.

  Rogaland is the district containing Stavanger.

  “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures . . .”— Matthew 6:19, 21.

  “Somehow Astrid helped her make up the money—in secret of course.”— The following verse might apply to Astrid’s pre- and postmortem doings: “But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”— Matthew 6:3–4.

  Bishop Eriksøn— Jørgen Eriksøn, the Bishop of Stavanger in 1571–1604, proved that the Lutherans were as firm against witchcraft as the Catholics. In 1584 Stavanger was the proud originator of the witchcraft law whose provisions eventually put to death about three hundred people in Norway, and we can give the Bishop some of the credit. The victims got hanged, burned or decapitated. In a portrait, the Bishop’s immense red moustache bends down over his mouth like the eaves of an old turf house, and his dark little eyes are sad and watchful in his pink moon-face.

  “Blessed are those who are persecuted” and “blessed are the meek”— Matthew 5:10, 5:5.

  THE MEMORY STONE

  Epigraph: “Most people say that the bride was rather gloomy . . .”—Diana Whaley, ed., Sagas of Warrior-Poets (New York: Penguin Books, p. 136, “The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue,” trans. Katrina Atwood). In the epigraph I have emended “Serpent-tongue” to “Serpent-Tongue.”

  The rock with the footprints and ship-carvings actually does lie in the center of Stavanger, and anyone who wishes can stand on it.

  The description of the landscape near Valhalla is derived from notes I took around Lillehammer in 2006. I am especially grateful to John Erik Riley for a beautiful driving trip toward Jötunheim.

  THE NARROW PASSAGE

  Epigraph: “. . . if foul witch dwell . . .”— Hollander, p. 239 (stanza 28; slightly “retranslated” by WTV).

  As mentioned in the source-notes to “Where Your Treasure Is,” Rogaland is the district containing Stavanger.

  According to this city’s Sjøfartsmuseum, Stavanger was one of the main embarkation ports for American-bound emigrants from 1825 to 1870. And here my celestial captain requires me to insert an endorsement for Den Norske Amerikalinje, eneste norske passagerlinje til New-York. This ship made seven hundred and seventy transoceanic voyages, the last one being in 1963.

  The discussion of emigration in my story (including the tale of the Amelia) relies considerably on information in Egil Harald Grude’s pamphlet From Vågen to America: The Migrant Exodus 1825–1930, trans. Susan Tyrrel (Stavanger: Dept. Maritime Museum in cooperation with Stavanger Vesta Insurance Co., printed by Rostrup Grafiske A.S., September 1986). According to Eli N. Aga and Hans Eyvind Næss, From Runes to Rigs: Cultural History Treasures of the Stavanger Region, trans. Rolf E. Gooderham (Stavanger?: Kulturkonsult, 2001), the herring arrived suddenly in 1808 (p. 88); then (p. 94) “the influx of herring became more and more unreliable after 1850, and the fishery came to an end in the 1870s.”

  Some of my descriptions of Stavanger and the herring factories at this period are derived from illustrations (and, occasionally, text) in Susan Tyrell, Once Upon a Town (Stavanger: Dreyer Bok, 1979), pp. 26, 32–37, 75. Nowadays Stavanger is blessed with night-water twitching with reflected window-lights, and rain clouds hang nearly blue over the great oil ships, whose bridges glow more brightly than anything, while faraway ivory-yellow windows call across the black water.

  Saint Mary’s and Haakon’s church— These are at Asvaldsnes (a visit for which I thank Mr. Eirik Bø), and here I first heard of that Doomsday legend.

  Hjelmeland and Suldal are two contiguous districts to the northeast of Stavanger, which, as I have said, lies in Rogaland. Hjelmeland is closer.

  Reverend Johansen’s Bible passage: “Carry me, O LORD . . .”— Of course this is not a Bible passage at all, but a stanza from the Eddic poem “Skírnismál,” which I have clothed in a pseudo-Christian disguise. The original reads: “Thy steed then lend me to lift me o’er weird / ring of flickering flame, / the sword also that swings itself, / if wise he who wields it” (Hollander, p. 67).

  Description of the “petroglyphs of long ships”— After a photograph in Frá haug ok heithni: Tidsskrift for Rogalands Arkeologiske Forening (Stavanger), nr. 1, 2007, p. 17.

  “For the gate is narrow . . .”— Matthew 7:14.

  “Glasir stands gold-leaved before Sigtyr’s halls.”— Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. Anthony Faulkes (London: J. M. Dent & Sons / Everyman, 1992 repr. of 1987 ed.), p. 96 (my “retranslation” of a line quoted in isolation from Skaldskaparmal). The title may be unclear, so let me note that this book is not in the Elder or Poetic Edda, which I cite as “Hollander,” but the Younger or Prose Edda, written ca. 1220–30. “Sygtyr” is one of Odin’s many names
.

  The maneuvers of King Rörek— Olaf Sagas, pp. 196–97.

  “If you, Kristina, and you, Øistein, do not yet hate each other . . .”—Cf. Luke 14:26.

  Description of the pond behind the Domkirke— Frá haug ok heithni, nr. 1, 2004, p. 7 (Bodil Wolf Johnsen, Byparken—En Historisk Oversikt, landscape painting from 1852).

  THE QUEEN’S GRAVE

  Epigraph: “But how is that future diminished . . .”— Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. E. B. Pusey, D.D. (London: Dent/Everyman’s Library, 1962; orig. Latin text bef. 430 A.D.), p. 274.

  Description of the queen’s grave and its environs— After a visit in 2011 (thanks to the lovely Marit Egaas) to Hå Old Rectory, Nærbo, a seaside cemetery of sixty-odd Bronze Age mounds; and to Tinghaud and Krosshaug (near Klepp) where there is in fact an ancient queen’s grave.

  The first Hnoss, Swegde, postmortem taxes to Frey, etcetera— Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, Part Two: Sagas of the Norse Kings, trans. Samuel Laing, rev. Peter Foote, M.A. (New York: Dutton: Everyman’s Library, 1961 rev. of 1844 trans.; orig. text 1220–1235), pp. 7–17. My Queen Hnoss is invented, as is her husband, King Yngvar, not to mention the Jötunsbok (I do wish that Frost Giants could write).

  Einar Audunsson— My invention.

  THE GHOST OF RAINY MOUNTAIN

  Rainy Mountain is an invented place, but some of the landscape is indebted to the shrine of Nikko.

  THE CAMERA GHOST

  The watcher on the side— For readers who might not be familiar with Japanese Noh plays, the “watcher on the side,” the waki, is the one to whom the story (usually one of suffering as a result of an undying attachment) is narrated. Several other Noh references appear in “The Camera Ghost.” These would require much explication here, none of which is needed (I hope) to parse the story. A résumé of Noh characters and situations may be found in my book Kissing the Mask.

  My camera’s eye— It was certainly strict in its fashion, neither blinking away an annoying telephone wire nor softening anything sad with a tactful tear. But because it was so uncompromising, it taught me how to see more carefully, so that unwanted telephone wires became fewer over the years.