Novels Not At All Exemplary by Dalton Trevisan

 

Dalton Trevisan, short story writer par excellence from Brazil. For seventy years (70!) the author has been using the everyday life of lower class people from his home city of Curitiba as the basis for his concise, refined tales that have been called "haiku in prose."

For Dalton Trevisan, it's exclusively short stories - no novels, no essays, no poetry, just short stories all the way. And there's no greater example of the author's extraordinary talent on display than in his 1959 collection, Novelas Nada Exemplares (Novels Not At All Exemplary).

Oh, friends, I'm such a huge Dalton Trevisan fan. To share my excitement for these short (typically three to seven pages) stories frequently based on dialogue and spotlighting the grueling, grotesque sides of life, I'll focus on a duo from the collection.

SOUP
Tale of three: husband, wife, son - all unnamed but I'll give the married couple the usual names Dalton Trevisan uses in his fiction: João and Maria. As for their son, I'll simply call him Sonny.

There he is, old João, dragging his weary ass up the thirty steps to his shabby apartment. He congratulates himself since he pauses to breathe only once, on step number fifteen - he thinks to himself: only one pause, I'm still a man.

João trudges into the kitchen without looking at Maria, without washing his hands and simply sits down at the table. Maria fills the plate with soup and places it in front of him.

Eyes red from sleep, Sonny emerges from his room and crosses the kitchen. João blinks, intoxicated with the heady soup vapors. João asks Sonny where he's going. Sonny turns on the bathroom facet and says, "To shave." João fires back, "It's dinner time. Come eat." Sonny takes his time, turns the faucet off and comes out with a towel around his neck, not once looking at his father and says, "I don't want to eat, I'm not hungry." João halts his spoon, retorts, "You may not want to eat, but come to the table."

At this point Dalton Trevisan zeros in on a key interaction of what makes life a continuous hell for these three when he writes -

"As on every night, he was famished. He filled his spoon, breathed in the smell of the bean soup, and pursing his thick lips, swallowed it with pleasure. The son drew on the flower-print tablecloth with his fork. The wife, that one there, was looking at the stove, her hand on her chin."

Recall Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit where three people sit facing one another in a small room and, following a particularly emotionally charge interaction, one character blurts out, "Hell is other people."

As the story progresses, it becomes painfully obvious old man João insisting Sonny sit at the kitchen table as he slurps his bean soup is creating a hell for his son. As for Maria, she must stand by and refill his empty plate with more bean soup. But, as she eventually tells João, there's just one thing that she can't do, one thing that makes her sick to her stomach: to watch him, her husband, the husband she washes clothes for, sleeps in bed with, cooks soup for, yes, just one thing that makes her sick to her stomach: sitting at the same table as he slurps his black bean soup.

My condensed sketch is meant to convey a taste (no pun intended) of this penetrating tale of a poor family at dinner time. If we read carefully, we can detect every word, every phrase contributes to the mood, tone and pathos of the unfolding drama. Fortunately for English readers, the translation of Dalton Trevisan from the Portuguese is compliments of the great Gregory Rabassa.

JOÃO NICOLAU
In case anybody thinks a Brazilian farm boy might have it easier than the poverty-stricken lads of Curitiba, Dalton writes this five page saga of João Nicolau setting out for the city to make a life for himself in the high-cut boots he inherited from his father.

Not having money for a train ticket, João decides to walk to the city. Halfway there he's thirsty and asks for water from a girl sitting on a front porch. The girl's father, Bortolão, offers room and board if João will repair the roof on his old barn.

João accepts and during the evening chats with the dark-haired beauty on the porch, a lass he nicknames Negrinha. No sooner is the roof repaired then Negrinha's aunt dies. During the wake, Bortolão insists João drink glass after glass of cane liquor. That very night, Negrinha climbs up the barn loft to sleep with João.

At dawn, Negrinha still fast asleep, João grabs his boots and sets out again for the city. However, he doesn't get that far - little does he know he's been sabotaged: wise Negrinha put cowhage in his boots to slow down his flight.

Feet on fire, João stops at a big old house along the road where he asks for lodging. The next day, João forgets about leaving since he's now mad with passion over the innkeeper's daughter - stunning Cristina with the blonde hair in two braids with crimson bows at the ends. João doesn't waste time - at night, Cristina's body so white and luminous, like a phosphorescent fish in dark waters.

Cristina sews her own wedding gown and João wears his dying father-in-law's blue suit. After the marriage, the old man asks João to go to the city for a bottle of a certain miraculous water. However, once in the city, bad news - a detective, a friend of Bortolão, arrests João who spends the night in prison. The very next day João is taken before a judge where he sees Negrinha, three months pregnant, and her father. The judge gives João a choice: marry Negrinha or go to jail for seven years.

Married yet again, João tells Bortolão he'll travel back with Negrinha to his mother's house . Once on the journey, João takes action: he stabs Negrinha and leaves her for dead. But bad luck strikes: Negrinha survives, goes to the police and João is arrested the following morning. In jail, João, weeping in repentance, hitting his head against the wall, tries to hang himself with the laces from his boots. But as luck would have it, the laces break.

Do things get worse for João; does the wheel of fate hurl him down into even more turmoil and suffering? Yes, indeed. One thing's for sure: you don't want to be a main character in a Dalton Trevisan story.
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Readers of English can read these and many other tales from Novels Not At All Exemplary in a wonderful collection published by Alfred Knoff entitled The Vampire of Curitiba and Other Stories. Highly, highly recommended.


Dalton Trevisan, born 1925