{"id":414512,"date":"2019-02-08T10:00:52","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T15:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/?p=414512"},"modified":"2019-07-29T12:53:12","modified_gmt":"2019-07-29T16:53:12","slug":"gesell-dome-by-guillermo-saccomanno-excerpt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2019\/02\/08\/gesell-dome-by-guillermo-saccomanno-excerpt\/","title":{"rendered":"“Gesell Dome” by Guillermo Saccomanno [Excerpt]"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we posted about last week<\/a>, Guillermo Saccomanno<\/a> is our featured author of the month. Throughout February, you can get 30% off both of his books<\/a> by using the code SACCOMANNO at checkout.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

To entice you, below you’ll find a excerpt from the first Saccomanno book we published,\u00a0<\/em>Gesell Dome<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Like\u00a0<\/em>True Detective\u00a0through the lenses of William Faulkner and John Dos Passos,\u00a0<\/em>Gesell Dome\u00a0is a mosaic of misery, a page-turner that will keep you enthralled until its shocking conclusion.<\/em><\/p>\n

This incisive, unflinching expos\u00e9 of the inequities of contemporary life weaves its way through dozens of sordid storylines and characters, including an elementary school abuse scandal, a dark Nazi past, corrupt politicians, and shady real-estate moguls. An exquisitely crafted novel by Argentina\u2019s foremost noir writer,\u00a0<\/em>Gesell Dome\u00a0reveals the seedy underbelly of a popular resort town tensely awaiting the return of tourist season.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s a small section of the novel, translated from the Spanish by Andrea G. Labinger.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It was barely the end of March. And people could talk about nothing but Melina\u2019s suicide. No matter how much they tried to avoid it, Melina slipped into every conversation. The weather: summery. You could still walk around in shirtsleeves. Nights were just cool enough for a sweater. It was on one of those nights. At middle school: that\u2019s where it happened. And what happened distracted us from Melina for a while.<\/p>\n

At night school, I was saying, a kid gutted another kid. The murderer, they claimed, was a scrawny little half-breed who kept to himself, and the other one, the victim, another half-breed, a big guy who used to beat up the whole class, including the other guy, the weakling, always teasing him. Until one night last week the bully threw a wad of paper at his target. Not a peep out of the shy one. At his desk, minding his own business. But then he stands up, walks over to the other one, and stabs him with a kitchen knife. Then he splits. A clumsy oaf looking for a hideout, he sneaks into a little shed in back of his house. And what does his saintly mother do? She hauls his ass over to the police station; she turns him in. The cop took him to Dolores, but they say the kid will go free. Because of how meek he was, they say, they\u2019re going to let him go. Because he acted under emotional pressure. And yet they say the kid wasn\u2019t so meek after all, nor did he come from as normal a family as some people swear. Brawlers, the father and the uncles. I was with them at a few asados<\/em>. I remember a lamb we were carving up at a stand in La Polaca. A drunk hassled one of the uncles. The uncle\u2019s knife was a flash of light. In the end they let the kid go, someone says. And when he returns to night school, the whole gang grabs him and crushes him. Not one bone left unbroken. He\u2019s in the hospital now. In a body cast. Now it seems like there\u2019s going to be a protest in the Villa to make them lock the kid up again. His father\u2019s going to be at the march, too, he said. With his knife. To skin alive the ones who want the kid put away again. Mano a mano or in a mob, he\u2019ll skin them alive, he promised.<\/p>\n

And of course it was Moure, the veterinarian, who offered this opinion: Half-breeds shouldn\u2019t be sent to school. They should be sent to gas chambers. He said it with conviction.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tuesday morning, sitting at the computer as he downed another mug of instant coffee, Dante, the sixtyish publisher and only reporter for El Vocero<\/em>, our Friday newspaper, after editing the story about the kid who got knifed in a classroom at middle school, wondered how to write about Melina\u2019s suicide, the topic that had brought him there.<\/p>\n

Solid gold, that girl. Her father, el Negro Berto, was a likeable, well-regarded guy, but he also had a strong, even irritable, disposition. He would take off his thick glasses, anticipating a fight that never came to pass. Because every outburst was over almost before it began, and he quickly reverted to his good-natured gaucho\u00a0<\/span>self. These outbursts, they said, began when he lost his wife and was left alone with Melina, who was three at the time. Since then, although several females fluttered their wings at him, Berto had no romantic history to speak of. Melina was, as they say, the light of his life. My friend, my companion, my sweetheart, he called her. The light of my life. If Berto killed himself working night and day at the shop, it was because he had sworn to himself that the girl would never lack for anything. Only the best for her, he repeated. And when she finished high school, he vowed, Melina would study law. Melina would have a degree. Melina wouldn\u2019t be some common girl like so many in La Virgencita and El Monte. Melina would be someone. And when she got serious about a boy, he would have to embody all the favorable and proper conditions to share his life with a real young lady. All the conditions. And more.<\/p>\n

The kids at middle school. First the girl\u2019s suicide. Then the stabbed little half-breed. Murder, Dante thought, was within the realm of normalcy. Why not? Marginality, violence, et cetera. And that et cetera contained a sort of wretchedness that wasn\u2019t his problem, though it was what inspired the crime section of El Vocero<\/em>, he had to admit, which was running a bit short today. But Melina\u2019s suicide was something else. He couldn\u2019t put aside the secret. The secret, an open secret, was known throughout middle school and also in the neighborhood. The suspense was growing. Not only for Dante. We all wondered how El Negro Berto would react when he found out about his daughter\u2019s romance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sharpshooting champion,<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>El Vocero reports. A distinguished and very\u00a0<\/em>large Villa crowd attended the traditional Sharpshooting Pistol Competition,\u00a0<\/em>sponsored and promoted by the Chamber of Commerce and the Beer\u00a0<\/em>Lovers\u2019 Association. It should be noted that the crowd on this occasion was\u00a0<\/em>larger than in previous years, which proves that interest in this contest\u00a0<\/em>is growing, especially on the part of young people. More than 80 marksmen\u00a0<\/em>from Buenos Aires, Madariaga, Mar del Plata, Necochea, and Bah\u00eda\u00a0<\/em>Blanca were in attendance. There were seven very fluid events, consisting\u00a0<\/em>of 9, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, and 31 shots apiece. The winner in the Unmodified\u00a0<\/em>Gun Division was our dear Esteban Armada, 18. The champion\u00a0<\/em>received congratulations from our mayor, Alberto Cachito Calder\u00f3n, who\u00a0<\/em>presented him with the trophy. A big shot, Esteban.<\/em><\/p>\n

The end of March, the air of March, the light of March. I\u2019m at an asado<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>with the Melit.ns in the park of the Transatlantic Building. Juan Melit\u00f3n is a street cleaner contracted by the city lumberyard. Mariela, his wife, is the custodian of the building. The couple is there with their son, Kevin, along with guests, three of Kevin\u2019s young friends. Like Kevin, they\u2019re all fifteen. And there\u2019s no way around it: it\u2019s hard to move the conversation away from a pregnant girl\u2019s suicide.<\/p>\n

One of the kids makes an attempt: I\u2019m glam, says the one in red pants. Not me, says the one with a pierced lower lip. I\u2019m punk. But we all wear skinny jeans. Stovepipe pants\u2014in my day we called them stovepipes. One of the kids, the long-nosed one, is an orphan, Melit\u00f3n the Gaucho tells me. The pimply one, the one who looks like a wanker, has parents who are separated. We\u2019re reggae, says the kid. And he points to Kevin: I\u2019m gonna be Rasta, Kevin promises. With dreads and everything, he smiles.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019ll beat the living shit out of you, his father replies, adding soda to his red wine. He takes a swallow, returns to the grill, and brings chinchulines<\/em>.\u00a0<\/span>As he serves them, the conversation turns to the murder at night school. In addition to Melina\u2019s death, the kids have been hit hard by the knifing at night school. They hadn\u2019t yet gotten over Melina\u2019s tragedy when they were struck by another. Struck, I say. No, grazed. Maybe because at their age these dramas seem like a novel; they get swept up in them. And who doesn\u2019t like to feel he\u2019s part of a novel, right?<\/p>\n

A kid knifed another kid, they said. The murderer was shy. He looked like a wuss. And the other guy, a bully, on his case all the time. Till the nerd stuck a knife in him. The zit-covered guy reflects: You gotta watch out for the quiet ones. The one with the big nose says: That dude could really draw. An artist. Cities blown up by death. Vampires, he drew. Skeletons.<\/p>\n

And you? Melit\u00f3n asked. You wanna be like that?<\/p>\n

What do you want me to be\u2014a street cleaner like you?<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have the money to pay for a school like Nuestra Se\u001d\u00f1ora for you, Mariela tells him. So you\u2019ll have to behave yourself and do okay in middle school.<\/p>\n

To be someone, Melit\u00f3n tells him. Anyone can be a bully with a knife. In workman\u2019s sandals, that\u2019s how I want to see you.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For people from around here, this is the Villa, and when they say Villa, they trace this place back to its origins, the Central European pioneers. Italians, Galicians, those who came from other parts, like the majority, because the majority here came from other parts, not just from Austria, as if Austria was a big deal. Everyone, I\u2019m saying, including the natives, calls this town the Villa. And when they say \u201cVilla,\u201d they feel like a superior, chosen race. The kids, on the other hand, those who were born here, almost all share the single goal of getting the hell out. The stoner snobs who want to keep on kicking back take their surfboards to Costa Rica. The blue-collar kids who are looking to earn some cash go to Spain to become dishwashers or to the States to scrub toilets. Wherever it is, they\u2019ll be better off. Anywhere but the Villa. This damn town, they call it. They\u2019ve got plenty of reasons. Wait till winter and you\u2019ll understand, Dante predicts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we posted about last week, Guillermo Saccomanno is our featured author of the month. Throughout February, you can get 30% off both of his books by using the code SACCOMANNO at checkout.\u00a0 To entice you, below you’ll find a excerpt from the first Saccomanno book we published,\u00a0Gesell Dome. Like\u00a0True Detective\u00a0through the lenses of William […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":413752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[68252,62866],"class_list":["post-414512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-author-of-the-month","tag-guillermo-saccomanno"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414512","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=414512"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":423472,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414512\/revisions\/423472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}