{"id":299546,"date":"2014-09-24T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-24T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2014\/09\/24\/cristina-fernandez-cubas-and-hijacking-stories-month-of-a-thousand-forests\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T15:12:31","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T15:12:31","slug":"cristina-fernandez-cubas-and-hijacking-stories-month-of-a-thousand-forests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2014\/09\/24\/cristina-fernandez-cubas-and-hijacking-stories-month-of-a-thousand-forests\/","title":{"rendered":"Cristina Fern\u00e1ndez Cubas and "Hijacking Stories" [Month of a Thousand Forests]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cristina Ferna\u00e1ndez Cubas is today’s first entry in the ongoing Month of a Thousand Forests series.<\/a> Below you’ll find a bit from one of her novels, her explanation for why she included it, and a bit about what Julio Cort\u00e1zar called “stories against the clock.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Through the end of the month you can buy<\/em> A Thousand Forests in One Acorn<\/a> for only $15 by entering FORESTS<\/span> at checkout on the Open Letter site.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

Cristina Fern\u00e1ndez Cubas (Spain, 1945)<\/b><\/center><\/p>\n

With respect to the novel El a\u00f1o de Gracia<\/em>, I\u2019d like to recall its origin. The starting point was a story in the newspaper El Pa\u00eds. It was about an environmental group, \u201cOperation Dark Harvest,\u201d and their failed expedition to the island of Gruinard, one of the Hebrides off the northwest coast of Scotland. The island had been contaminated with anthrax in 1941, as a precaution against a possible biological war with Germany, and the goal of the environmentalists was to make off with soil samples and denounce the dangers posed by its mere existence. But what I really found interesting was the geographical location, its characteristics, the setting. An island closed to public curiosity, less than two kilometers from civilization, with the only people granted access being a team of scientists who, with the necessary precautions, visited the island every two years. And above all, this fact: the former inhabitants of the island, mostly shepherds, had been forced to evacuate. On the island, then, there only remained a number of sheep, abandoned to chance . . . And from there my imagination took over. I wondered about the effects of the anthrax on those flocks of sheep; I wondered if it were possible the sheep had become feral and developed murderous tendencies; I thought that perhaps, one shepherd\u2014just one\u2014hiding among the fog and craggy rocks, had refused to follow the order and stayed on the island . . . And so El a\u00f1o de Gracia<\/em> was born. The story of a young man, well versed in theology and dead languages\u2014though completely unaware of the ways of the world\u2014whose sister Grace gives him \u201cthe gift of a year\u201d and fate ends up taking him to the island . . . I still remember the writing process with a mixture of nostalgia and fondness. Gruinard gave me the opportunity to go on an anachronistic adventure in the middle of the twentieth century. And I took it as far as it would go. [. . .]<\/p>\n

In an interview with El Pa\u00eds you mentioned the stories that don\u2019t let you go until you\u2019ve finished them, that leave you exhausted, and you cite Cort\u00e1zar, who calls them \u201cstories against the clock.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

You could also call them \u201chijacking stories.\u201d You can\u2019t break free from them until you finish them. And then yes, then you can breathe easy, as if you\u2019d just taken off an enormous backpack, a burden . . . They\u2019re usually not very long (it would be hard to stand so much tension) and very frequently they turn rather mysterious even for the author. For a time, at least. Afterward, you start tying up loose ends, understanding where they came from and why they grabbed you like that . . . But all of this belongs to the secret life of stories.<\/p>\n

*<\/center><\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

from El a\u00f1o de Gracia<\/em><\/center>
\n
(The Year of Grace)<\/center>
\n
[A Novel]<\/center><\/p>\n

The first word the ancient shepherd mumbled over my sickbed\u2014or the first one I seem to remember\u2014was Grock. At the time, confused by what appeared to be a strange being that was half sheep and half man, it didn\u2019t occur to me that my timely visitor was capable of naming himself, and I assumed it was bleating. But the long recovery, and that strange lucidity that sometimes comes with fever, led me to babble different phrases in various languages until I understood that Grock was speaking a rudimentary English peppered with an abundance of expressions in Gaelic\u2014a language that, unfortunately, I knew nothing about other than its mere existence\u2014and that if I dispensed with any sort of flourish and instead resorted to the purest simplification, my rescuer\u2019s eyes lit up, he nodded or shook his head, and he tried, in turn, to reduce his language as much as possible and limit himself to naming things.<\/p>\n

Learning Grock\u2019s language wasn\u2019t terribly burdensome. What helped wasn\u2019t so much my knowledge of English as the evidence that the old man\u2019s peculiar syntax was extremely similar to that of primitive languages, and even to that of many of our children when, provided with a certain vocabulary, they start to express their needs. Grock\u2019s sentences frequently began directly with the material object of interest, then moved on to the accessory information, to the how and why, to the circumstances, and only later, much later, to the real answers to my questions. I asked him repeatedly about the name of the island we were on, and his answer was: \u201cGrock.\u201d I tried to be much more explicit, and adding gestures and faces, I said: \u201cIsland . . . This island . . . What is it called?\u201d The answer was invariable: \u201cGrock.\u201d It was obvious that he didn\u2019t distinguish between his name and what was an object of his property. Grock had spent too many years among sheep.<\/p>\n

But I couldn\u2019t curse my luck. Thanks to the shepherd\u2019s care and the bits of information I managed to drag out of him with a great deal of patience, I was able to form an approximate idea of where we were located. In an earlier time the Island of Grock had been inhabited by several families of shepherds. Later, \u201cmany, many years ago . . . ,\u201d for reasons the old man wasn\u2019t aware of or didn\u2019t know how to explain, the families gathered their belongings, left their flocks behind, and abandoned the land. Only Grock remained on the island, in charge of hundreds of sheep, the mothers of the mothers of the mothers of those quadrupeds that had made such an impression on me and that, as I seemed to understand, either because they were too many to be controlled by one man, or because the shepherd avoided them, didn\u2019t take long to go from tame flocks to feral, bloodthirsty packs. \u201cThey did very bad things to Grock,\u201d he said. \u201cVery bad things.\u201d I soon discovered that the shepherd utterly despised them. When he talked about sheep, his face took on a terrifying appearance, his eyes shone with wild fury, and he reveled in reciting the long list of punishments he\u2019d made them suffer to show them that he was Grock, the master of the island, and that they had done \u201cvery bad things.\u201d When I finally asked him what constituted the wicked actions of those beasts (secretly afraid he\u2019d tell me), the ferocious gleam again dilated his pupils for a moment, then was replaced, almost immediately, by an unexpected expression of tenderness. \u201cThey killed Grock,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For the first few days, I often had to resort to imagination, sometimes pure invention, to interpret the shepherd\u2019s perplexing statements. He insisted that I was from Glasgow\u2014though, maybe, he was using that name to mean anywhere off the island\u2014and he seemed very surprised by the story of the shipwreck, of my rescue, and of the subsequent disappearance of the remains of the Providence<\/em>. I don\u2019t think Grock knew how to pretend, but the absurd possibility that the old man\u2014almost like a child\u2014might be unaware of the ship\u2019s mysterious destination left me baffled. Again I faced the large number of enigmas yet to be solved, and I had a feeling that the limited narrative faculties of my rescuer weren\u2019t going to be of much help to me for the time being.<\/p>\n

I had surrendered myself to dark conjectures when Grock, who had just polished off my last bottle of gin, broke into wild laughter. I didn\u2019t have time to be startled. As if he\u2019d suddenly remembered the reason for his boundless joy, the old man grabbed a case that was hanging from his neck, pulled out a wrinkled card and, still laughing, handed it to me. Here I had to rub my eyes to be sure I wasn\u2019t dreaming. What I had in my hands was a color photograph, a portrait of the shepherd himself, taken by an instant camera. So the island wasn\u2019t as deserted as I\u2019d been led to believe. I didn\u2019t stop to think about what sort of disturbed mind would come up with the macabre idea of photographing Grock, nor did it seem appropriate to submit the shepherd to a new interrogation. All I knew how to do was join in his laughter as a simple proof of my good intentions. Between bursts of laughter, he told me about a little box with a button you could push, and little by little, shadows would appear, then colors, and finally, the image of a man. \u201cA man,\u201d he said. The apparent magic of the camera was what truly amused the shepherd. I looked back at the snapshot with a shudder. I held in my hands the cold, raw embodiment of horror. In front of me, convulsing with laughter, was little more than an old, mad child who had absolutely no idea he was laughing at himself.<\/p>\n

(Translated by Emily Davis)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cristina Ferna\u00e1ndez Cubas is today’s first entry in the ongoing Month of a Thousand Forests series. Below you’ll find a bit from one of her novels, her explanation for why she included it, and a bit about what Julio Cort\u00e1zar called “stories against the clock.” Through the end of the month you can buy A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[57266,58116,36566,57666,58126],"class_list":["post-299546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-a-thousand-forests-in-one-acorn","tag-cristina-fernandez-cubas","tag-emily-davis","tag-month-of-a-thousand-forests","tag-the-year-of-grace"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":337036,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299546\/revisions\/337036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}