Kamchatka (32 page)

In all those years I was never without a book from
la colección Robin Hood
that I'd found in grandma matilde's boxes, or a copy of
The Prisoner of Zenda
that had belonged to mamá when she was a little girl. It was here that I discovered the Princess Flavia, a noblewoman by birth but, more importantly, a woman noble in spirit, her hair as blonde as the sun on the Risk board. I can't explain how I felt when I found out that, even on our island, where we lived as castaways as the country was brutally laid waste, mamá had decided to call herself Flavia as a protest, and as a vindication, because she had never wanted to be the Rock – or at least this world had made her the Rock – this world that starves children to death because it allows others to steal the food from their plates, a world in which you have to be a rock so as not to die of heartache. What else is there? mamá had never wanted to be made of stone, this was why she instinctively appealed to the things that would help us to survive the dark times – those few certainties that you carry with you from childhood: memories of love, of grief, or simply fantasies, like the fantasy she had had since she was a little girl, a dream she found so embarrassing that she never dared tell anyone about it, because it was childish, because it was politically incorrect – the dream of being a real blonde, of being called Flavia, of becoming a princess.

The last thing papá said to me, the last word from his lips, was ‘Kamchatka'.

We were on the forecourt of a petrol station, we had just had breakfast. Mamá went to get the Midget – a king of infinite space – who was still sleeping in the car. He wasn't simply asleep, he was unconscious: he didn't wake up when he was lifted up, or when mamá covered him with hugs and kisses, or when she put him in grandpa's arms. I remember that grandpa carried him to the truck and then it was my turn for hugs and kisses, mamá squeezed me hard and then put her hands on my shoulders, as though distancing herself, and said: ‘Behave yourself'. She didn't say anything else – ‘Behave yourself', that was all – in the same tone she always used if she was leaving us alone in the house. It was an attempt to impose limits on our flair for disaster, but also a way of letting us know what would happen if we didn't listen to her: mamá would come home and we would get what was coming to us; mamá would come home, that was guaranteed. I thought: the Rock, mamá never weakens, and if papá had been nearby I would have made the Rock sign and clenched my fist, but papá wasn't there, he'd gone back to the Citroën to fetch something.

Sometimes there are variations in what I remember. Sometimes mamá turns and walks back to the Citroën and, as she does, she
drops something small, something red, an empty packet of Jockeys she's scribbled on; I pick it up and read what's written on it; over and over she's scribbled my name – my real name – covering the whole cigarette packet, as though she's afraid I might forget, might end up believing I was Harry forever. Harry, the escape artist. I'm not Harry, at least not now. I don't perform escapes any more. I understand this as I read it, I'm sure of it; but now, as I remember that scene for the nth time, I understand it more than ever.

Time is weird. Sometimes I think it's like a book. Everything is inside, between the front and back covers, the whole story, from beginning to end. You could get a bunch of people together, give them all copies of the same edition and ask them to open the book at any page and start reading and
voilà,
everything is happening simultaneously, in a concert of voices, like listening to several radio stations at the same time. It would be hard to work out what anyone was saying, just as it's hard to pick up a book, turn to a page at random, read a paragraph and truly understand what it means. It's easy to assume you would understand better if you had read what comes before, but it's not always true; sometimes you pick up the Bible or the I Ching or Shakespeare, open it at random and it seems as though the sentence you have happened on is telling you exactly what you longed to know, what you needed, what is essential. It doesn't always work, I admit. I imagine that someone listening to me talking about the toads might assume that I'm a biologist or that I'm telling a children's story. But it could also happen that they hear me precisely when I say: love one another madly, the people you know, but more importantly the people who need love, because love is the only thing that is real, it is the light, everything else is darkness; and maybe whoever was listening would understand completely without needing to hear the beginning, without needing to question my moral authority, without needing to know whether I have any moral authority, without needing to know what I have lost – what we all lose.

For a long time I lived in the place I call Kamchatka, a place that looks a little like the real Kamchatka (because of the cold, the volcanoes, the remoteness) but it is a place that doesn't really exist, because some places cannot be found on any map. Now that I have learned the importance of goodbyes, I would like to say goodbye to it. I had spent all those years there before I found the empty packet of Jockeys again, but now that I have found it, now it has appeared as I told my story for the nth time, I don't need Kamchatka any more, I no longer need the security I once felt being far from everything, unreachable, amid the eternal snows. The time has come for me to be where I am again, to be truly here, all of me, to stop surviving and start living.

‘Let's go home,' grandpa said, ‘it's time.'

Papá has gone to the car to fetch the game of Risk. He brings it over to me, hands it to me with a smile: ‘What an idiot, I almost forgot!' Then he kisses me and says I love you very much, his voice sounding like Narciso Ibañez Menta again: papá always gets kind of sombre when he has to say something important. Then I feel his stubble scrape my cheek and he whispers in my ear: he says a lot of things, but what I most remember is ‘Kamchatka', because ‘Kamchatka' is the last word from his lips; because it sums up all the others. Last words are important – Goethe's were ‘Light! More light!' – you have to pay attention to them.

They get into the car and drive away. I run behind the green bubble until I can't run any more. They do not turn to wave; they don't want to turn into pillars of salt.

Since then, whenever the game turned ugly, I have holed up in Kamchatka and I survived. And although at first I thought that papá and I had left a game unfinished, I've since realized that we didn't. He told me his secret and in doing so made me his ally, and every time I've played since he has been there beside me, and when things turned ugly we'd hang on to Kamchatka and in the end everything would be fine. Because Kamchatka was where you needed to be. Because Kamchatka was the place from where you fought back.

In writing
Kamchatka
, I have relied on invaluable information from a number of writers to whom I would like to express my gratitude.

My adventures in biology I owe in large part to Fritjof Capra's
The Web of Life
(1997) and Ernst Mayr's
This is Biology
(1997). My journey through the heavens I owe to John North and
The Fontana History of Astronomy and Cosmology
(1994). I have also drawn on Stephen Hawking's
A Brief History of Time
(1988).

For the politics and history of the Argentina in which Harry and I grew up, I have relied on Volume II of Eduardo Anguita and Martón caparrís' history,
La voluntad
(1998), and Miguel Bonasso's
Diario de un clandestino
(2000).

The translation of Herodotus I used is Robin Waterfield's:
The Histories
(Oxford University Press, 1998).

The quotation from
The Odyssey
is taken from Robert Fagles' translation, published by Penguin in 1996. The line of Margaret Atwood's appears in her novel
The Blind Assassin
(Bloomsbury, 2000). I found the Emerson quotation in a speech he gave at Harvard in 1837. The quotation from Sir Thomas Malory's
Le Morte d' Arthur
is from the Penguin English Library edition of 1981. And the Lawrence Durrell letters I quote were taken from Jorge Fondebrider's fascinating book,
La Buenos Aires ajena
(2000).

I am grateful, too, for the support of Amaya Elézcano and all of the team at Alfaguara España.

I dedicate this book to my children, Oriana, Agustina, Milena and Bruno, in the hope that this book forms part of that same, marvellous legacy.

Kamchatka

Marcelo Figueras

ABOUT THIS GUIDE

We hope that these discussion questions will enhance your reading group's exploration of Marcelo Figueras's
Kamchatka
. They are meant to stimulate discussion, offer new viewpoints and enrich your enjoyment of the book.

More reading group guides and additional information, including summaries, author tours and author sites for other fine Black Cat titles may be found on our Web site,
www.groveatlantic.com
.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1.
Kamchatka
is about a family that goes into hiding when a military coup overthrows the government of Argentina. Do you think this is a political book?

2. The novel is narrated from the point of view of Harry, the oldest son of the Vincentes. What sort of a narrator is Harry? Is he reliable? How does his point of view shift throughout the novel?

3. Discuss the way that
Kamchatka
is organized—not just by chapters, but by sections. What do the section titles refer to? What are the lessons Harry thinks you can learn about life from biology, geology, language, astronomy, and history?

4. Early in the book, Harry says, “In the end, we always are what we once were” (p. 5). What does
Kamchatka
say about the possibilities for change in human lives, or in life in general? What does Harry think changes, and what stays the same?

5. Harry repeatedly mentions his theories of time (“Time is weird,” he says often). In his first school, in Buenos Aires, Harry is taught that time and history are linear: “before our virgin eyes unfolded the history of humankind, the history of which, for better or worse, we were at that time the culmination” (p. 12). What does Harry think about how time works? What in his life would make him come up with these theories of time?

6. “My obsession with justice infuriated her,” says Harry, about his mother (p. 37). What is a child's sense of justice? Why was Harry's mother infuriated? Do we get a sense of Harry's parents' ideas of justice?

7. On page 39, Harry describes how the experiences of childhood form our politics. Do you agree with him? Can you remember instances from your childhood that you feel formed your sense of politics?

8. When Harry discovers the book about Houdini, it provides not just a pseudonym but a mission. Harry is constantly reminding others that Houdini was not a magician, but an escape artist. What does Harry see as the difference?

9. Harry and the Midget entertain themselves for most of the time they are at the
quinta
. What roles do games and fantasy play in the boys' lives? Are their games different than those of other children?

10. How is Harry introduced to religion? What is his understanding of it? How is the Midget's relationship to religion different?

11. Discuss the presence of the toads in the backyard pool. Why do Harry and the Midget build their “reverse diving board”? What do they hope to achieve? Are they successful? What do you think the toads represent in the novel?

12. Kamchatka
is mostly told from a child's point of view, but occasionally we get information from the narrator at a later time. Find one of these examples and explain what we learn and why the author has chosen to tell the story this way.

13. When we meet Harry's maternal grandmother, she's not a very likable figure. Later, though, he says, “My grandmother says that mamá saved her life” (p. 119). What does he mean?

14. What is Harry's first impression of Lucas? How does that impression change? How does their relationship build, and why is Lucas important to Harry? Why, when they are talking, will Lucas sometimes say, “Wrong question”?

15. Think about the different myths and stories that Harry has read, from
The Odyssey
to
King Arthur
to
Superman
. What does Harry learn from these stories? How do they affect how he sees himself and the world?

16. Do you think Harry sees his parents accurately, as real people? Does he understand them?

17. Who adjusts better to living in hiding, Harry or the Midget? At the end of the novel, Harry's mother says, “But if you build a wall to protect yourself from the world outside, you end up realizing you've shut yourself in. Don't shut yourself in, darling. It's better to suffer than to feel nothing at all” (p. 281-82). Where are some examples in the novel of Harry shutting himself in?

18. Discuss the father/son dynamics in the novel. What is Harry's relationship with his father like? What happens when they are on the boat at
abuelo
's house? Why don't they tell anyone what really happened?

19. When Harry runs away for the day and returns to Buenos Aires to find Bertuccio, Bertuccio's mother lies and says he's not home. Why? What does Harry learn after this trip?

20. Kamchatka is both a real place and a region in the game Risk. It is also the last word Harry's father ever says to him. Discuss the role of Kamchatka in the book and what it symbolizes to Harry. Why do you think the author chose Kamchatka for the book's title?

Suggested Further Reading

The Ministry of Special Cases
by Nathan Englander;
Eat the Document
by Dana Spiotta;
The Vagrants
by Yiyun Li;
The Last of Her Kind
by Sigrid Nunuz;
How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone
by Saša Stanišić;
Something Red
by Jennifer Gilmore;
The Lotus Eaters
by Tatjana Soli;
Train to Trieste
by Domnica Radulescu;
The Appointment
by Herta Müller