AND ALSO CLENCHED IN RAGE
Paradais by Fernanda Melchor; translated by Sophie HughesFitzcarraldo EditionsMarch 2022Selected by Barbara Epler
Set in a Mexican luxury-housing complex, Paradais stars two misfit teenagers who skulk around getting drunk. One guy is lonely, fat, porn-addicted and dying to get his neighbour – an attractive married woman and mother – into bed. The other is the gated community’s gardener who wants to escape his control-freak mother and their narco-controlled village. Faced with the impossibility of getting what they want, they hatch a violent and terrifyingly idiotic scheme. The novel’s power springs from the utterly relentless authorial voice. People often say a gifted writer has talent to burn; well, Fernanda Melchor is blazing and drinking gasoline – and no reader will forget the scorching vistas she opens up. – Barbara Epler
It was all fatboy’s fault, that’s what he would tell them. It was all because of Franco Andrade and his obsession with Señora Marián. Polo just did what he was told, followed orders. Fatboy was completely crazy about her, and Polo had seen first-hand how for weeks the kid had talked about nothing but screwing her, making her his, whatever it took; the same shit over and over like a broken record, his eyes vacant and bloodshot from the alcohol and his fingers sticky with cheesy powder, which the fat pig only ever licked clean once he’d scoffed the whole jumbo bag of crisps. I’ll fuck her like this, he’d drawl, having clambered to his feet at the edge of the dock; I’ll fuck her like this and then I’ll flip her on all fours and I’ll bang her like this, and he’d wipe the drool from his mouth with the back of his hand and grin from ear to ear with those toothpaste-ad teeth of his, big, white and straight and also clenched in rage as his gelatinous body wobbled in a crude pantomime of coitus and Polo looked away and laughed feebly and made the most of fatboy being distracted to swipe the bottle, light another cigarette and blow the smoke hard up into the air to repel the ferocious mangrove mosquitos. It was all just fatboy’s idea of a joke, just banter, † drunk talk, or that’s what Polo had thought in the beginning, during their first benders down by the river, in the shadiest part of the small wooden platform that ran parallel to the water, just beyond the reach of the poolside lights and where the fig tree’s gnarled shadows kept them hidden from the development’s night watchman and residents, most crucially Franco’s grandparents who, according to Franco, would have a stroke if they caught their “little boy” ‡ consuming alcoholic drinks and smoking cigarettes and God knows what other crap; and worse still, in the company of a member of “the service” – as that idiot Urquiza called the development’s employees – the gardener, no less; an out and out scandal, an abuse of trust that would cost Polo his job, which didn’t really bother him anyway because he’d gladly never set foot inside that fucking development again; the problem was that sooner or later he’d have to go home to have it out with his mother, and while that was an awful – not to say downright chilling – prospect, Polo still couldn’t help himself. He could never say no to that lard-ass when he waved at him from his window; he didn’t want to put an end to their drinking sessions down on the dock no matter how much that prick did his head in, no matter how sick Polo was of his bullshit and his endless obsession with the neighbour, who fatboy had fallen for that afternoon in late May when the Maroños drove into the Paradais residential development to pick up the keys to their new home, Señora Marián herself at the wheel of their white Grand Cherokee.§
Polo remembered that day well: he had chuckled to himself on seeing the husband relegated to the passenger seat when the front window rolled down with a buzz and a waft of icy air hit his sweaty face. The woman raised her sunglasses, which otherwise completely obscured her eyes and reflected Polo’s face back at him, while she explained who they were and what they were doing there, her lips painted a scandalous red and her bare arms covered in silver bangles that tinkled like wind chimes when Polo finally raised the boom barrier and she thanked him with a wave of her hand. ◉
† The word used in the original Spanish is the slang term “pendejadas”, used colloquially to mean “bullshit”, but which literally means “pubic hair”.
‡ Polo’s disdainful quote marks lay bare the moral economy of the stratified class system he and Franco inhabit, which allows one 16-year-old to be a little boy while the other is an employable, fireable member of staff.
§ In Mexico City, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles fit Detroit-manufactured Jeep Grand Cherokees with NIJ-IIA armour, giving each vehicle 19mm-thick multilayer glass with polyvinyl inserts, engine protection, an anti-grenade underbody and run-flat tires.It costs 1,850,900 pesos, or just under £71,000.