Levi That's All I Know

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-914198-77-9
Verlag: Daunt Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 312 Seiten

A propulsive, bewitching novel about home and family, the ache of unrealised dreams and the quiet tragedy of unrequited love. Nineteen-year-old Lea is from a village that is out of time, out of jobs and out of hope. She and her friends, however, are vivid and electric with life. They yearn, they dance, they fuck, they fight. And around them, a world that isn't quite our own vibrates with strangeness and threat. Now Lea is here, sitting on a bench, telling a silent stranger her life story. Because yesterday, change was finally unavoidable. A novel of rural entrapment and coming of age, Elisa Levi's That's All I Know bears the traces of Beckett and Lorca, rings with the echo of folktales and has a fierce, unapologetic vitality at its heart. Startlingly odd and deeply moving, it is the work of a profound and singular talent.

Elisa Levi is a playwright, poet and writer. She studied at RADA now divides her time between being the director of a MFA in Editing and Publishing, and writing residencies all over the world. Yo no sé de otras cosas (That's All I Know) is her debut in the English language.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Levi, Elisa

Weitere Mitwirkende

Macsweeney, Christina

Leseproben

RUMINATING, LIKE COWS DO

I tell the man that the only thing he’ll find on this path is forest. That’s all I know. ‘But it’s in there,’ he replies. No, no, no way, I insist. You’ll die if you go into the forest. If you want, I’ll point the way or take you to where your dog is. ‘You don’t need to do that,’ he says. And I say, ‘Around here, dogs that haven’t eaten always go to the same place.’ ‘But my dog’s in there,’ he repeats. No, no, no way. I put a hand out to stop him ’cause I know that people who go into the forest never come out. They never reach anywhere and they die. They get tired and dehydrated. Or they get tired and die of cold. Or they get tired and life no longer offers them a way forward. I tug on his arm and explain. I explain that I belong here more than anyone else, that I might not be very old, but I know this place ’cause I have a backstory. I say that if he wants, I’ll tell him my story: I lost a dog when I was younger and it was with the hares.

You’re from goodness knows where, so you don’t know this, but around here lost dogs follow the scent of food and their frantic owners go rushing into the forest. I can’t count the number of people I’ve seen never return from the Landas, from the woodlands. You don’t know the first thing about it, but the fact is there’s no way out of that forest. And I notice that the man’s breathing sounds laboured and the beads of sweat falling from his brow could fill every well for miles around. The expression on his face moves me, makes me think I could tell him all about it. I could tell him that I’m leaving, that I’ve decided to leave this small place. And I soon begin to think this lost, confused man is the only person in the world who might understand me. Yes, he, and he alone, might understand me.

You see, I say, sitting him down to rest on the bench I’m leaning against; this bench is always in the shade and if the man goes on sweating like that, he’ll die without ever finding his dog. You see, I say, my dog got lost one Sunday in summer and my sister – she’s empty-headed ’cause she didn’t breathe when she was being born – cried in a different way. Nora usually only cries when her body hurts her. If you pinch her, she cries, if her stomach rumbles, she cries. But love, loneliness, sorrow; none of those things makes her cry. And that summer morning she cried ’cause the dog didn’t come back and our father said, ‘It’s gone to the place where the dead hares are.’ And, would you believe it, Nora cried less. Around here, there are piles of dead hares. Animals that die lie in a heap and make an awful stink. But then, sir, I don’t know anything about stinks ’cause I’ve never had a sense of smell, just like my mother, though she says she could smell a little as a teenager, but I’ve never been able to. And that’s a pity ’cause they say the scent of our tomatoes carries for miles. But that’s all I know about smells, and you don’t know anything about dogs that get lost here. We know about other things. Anyway, when we got there, the dog was dead. And my mother saw the blood dripping from its jaws and cried out, ‘It must have been a wolf.’

But I knew it had been Esteban – he lives across from where the hares are piled up – he’s sort of trigger-happy and we don’t get many wolves in these parts. Esteban went and killed my dog, and I wanted to kill him for making my sister cry. But don’t you worry, just sit here quietly, your dog is filling its stomach and we’ll see it sniffing around here again soon. Dogs aren’t like me, I can tell you. I’m more like a cat; they sniff and come to care for you. Just rest here with me, your shirt is all soaked in sweat. You’ll see, the dog will soon turn up.

The man and I sit, looking into the forest, and I note how he’s sweating. If you’re hot, you can take your shirt off, your dog might take its time coming back, I say. I just need to rest here a while, he replies, then I’ll go in there to look for him. No, no, no way, I tell him, really, don’t insist, don’t be fooled by my baby face, I’m fully nineteen years old and I know that when people go into the woodlands, darkness falls on them. This forest is treacherous, like the river when it’s flowing fast. There are no paths in this part of the woodlands and the firebreak is a long way off. The old folk say that if you go right across it, you’ll reach the sea, though I don’t believe them. But then I don’t understand north, south, east and west. I know about other things. Here, people look at the moss to figure out which way is which or they remember where the sun and the moon come up. As for me, the sun’s always catching me off guard, sometimes on my left, sometimes on my right. The forest is dangerous. Not even the civil guard go looking for people who get lost there ’cause they don’t want to go into the Landas, and we have no forest rangers here; we’re so remote nobody is interested. Mother Nature made the forest for us to be frightened of, so death, despair, and darkness would always be in our minds, ’cause when you go in there you can’t see the sun, there’s only dark shadows, and no matter how much moss, how many compasses, how good a sense of direction or memory you have, the forest gobbles you up like a hungry rabbit.

You’ll leave your dog an orphan if you don’t listen to me, sir. The man takes off his shirt and heat wafts from his skin. His body is wrinkly, but I figure he must be still in his sixties. He takes out his mobile phone and makes a grumbling noise in his throat. There’s practically no coverage in town; there is in Pueblo Grande, but here the signal gets lost. Like I said, this is the world’s end.

I hope you don’t mind if I smoke, I say, but the man neither looks at me nor responds. I can let you have some if you like; it’s the tobacco mixed with a little weed that Marco left at my door last night. He does that from time to time, and I like to come here to smoke it ’cause when I smoke Marco’s weed and stare into the forest, I imagine that the woodlands don’t exist and so I can see everything on the other side. But the man says nothing and doesn’t even look at me.

It’s hot for January, isn’t it? I say. And he agrees that it’s hot for January.

In this green, leafy town, the sun doesn’t bring anyone out into the street, I tell him. Except for Juana, who’s still mourning her brother and, when I go to get bread, I take some for her ’cause she eats so little these days. And what I usually say to her is, ‘Juana, it’s always darkest before the dawn.’ I can’t tell you how it hurts to see her out there, sitting alone, next to her brother’s empty chair. ‘Juana,’ I shout merrily when I see her, ‘time cures everything except old age and madness.’ And she laughs. And I leave the bread on her brother’s empty chair so she knows that death is just one day, not a whole life, and where her brother once sat there’s now bread, and that’s that.

The man turns to look at me and I say that I might be young, but I already know that’s how death is. When a person dies, they don’t take happiness with them, I say. The dead don’t take anything with them; death is just four tears and a pain in your breast, but life goes on for those of us left behind. And just as soon as the tears leave your eyes, they turn into water. And the man laughs, but I think that’s ’cause he doesn’t want to think of death that way. This man doesn’t have the first idea. You don’t know where you’ve ended up, I say, you know nothing about this town. Let me explain, we have plenty of time; if you stay here with me, your dog will return sooner or later. Dogs always come back. But you wouldn’t know that. And the man looks at me, but I look into the forest.

The man is sweating like a pig that’s about to be slaughtered.

I don’t have any water with me, sir, I say, but if you want, you can rest your head on my shoulder. Javier often does. Put his head on my shoulder, I mean. And sometimes I touch his face when he does that. But I won’t touch yours. In town they say I’m a chatterbox, and I talk even more when I smoke Marco’s weed. But maybe, now that you have plenty of time, you won’t mind listening to me.

Not many people come here. And the man’s breathing speeds up. Were you aware of that, or is it another thing you don’t know? And the man looks at me and says that he doesn’t really know how he ended up here, on the edge of this small town. You got lost with your dog and now your dog’s lost you. Don’t worry, that sort of thing happens to people who are new to the area.

And what are you doing here? the man asks. Waiting, I reply. I’m waiting with you for your lost dog. The man sighs and I’m sure he’s sighing ’cause it’s always better to wait with someone else. If you get lost again tomorrow, you won’t find me here. What am I doing here, waiting quietly in the shade? I’m...