Carlos LabbГ© - Spiritual Choreographies

PRAISE FOR
CARLOS LABB

Begins to fuck with your head from its very first word.

Toby Litt

What we encounter in Loquela is a skillful unmakingcomplete with diary excerpts, missives from beyond the grave and an invented barn-burning manifesto on a literary movement, Corporalism, which seeks to breathe life into the corpse of literaturethat manages to offer new ways of thinking about what the novel can do.

Laird Hunt, L.A. Times

Labb wreaks havoc on narrative rules from the start and keeps doing it.

Bookforum

Loquela is drenched in the spirit of experimentality, dry and absurd humor, strangeness, and intrigue.

Simone Wolff, Bookslut

Navidad & Matanza could be the hallucinogenic amalgamation of a Csar Aira plot with setting and characters conceived by Bolao if written using Oulipo-style constraints. With ample imagination and commanding style, Navidad & Matanza certainly marks Labb as a young author from whom we ought to anticipate great, fascinating things to come.

Jeremy Garber, Powells Books

ALSO BY
CARLOS LABB

Loquela

Navidad & Matanza

Translated from the Spanish by
Will Vanderhyden

SPIRITUAL

CHOREOGRAPHIES

CARLOS LABB

Copyright 2017 by Carlos Labb and Editorial Perifrica

Translation copyright 2019 by Will Vanderhyden

First edition, 2019

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Available.

ISBN-13: 978-1-940953-97-7 / ISBN-10: 1-940953-97-9

This project is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Printed on acid-free paper in the United States of America.

Text set in Dante, a mid-20th-century book typeface designed by Giovanni
Mardersteig. The original type was cut by Charles Malin.

Design by N. J. Furl

Open Letter is the University of Rochesters nonprofit, literary translation press:
Dewey Hall 1-219, Box 278968, Rochester, NY 14627

www.openletterbooks.org

For Inti, Mnica Ramn Ros,
and the Labb Jorqueras.

In memory of Caries, Ex Fiesta,
Tornaslidos, Triple Turbante,
and the Costa Rica Space Program

CONTENTS

SPIRITUAL

CHOREOGRAPHIES

The choreography needs someone to witness its movements.

I am he.

I am he, the other, she, you, they.

He played the harmonica with his nose, pulled out his handkerchief and blew until all the pollution of the capital was expelled from his lungs in one transparent color. He finger-tapped his flat chest like a kultrun, gargling to imitate a harp.

He thought hed be able to escape to his tree when he could not longer bear the smog of the city.

I, on the other hand, now that I have no nostrils with which to inhale or exhale, want a melody of bows and strings and stones to still be raining down from all five fingers, onto this skin, stretched across this orthopedic wheelchair, when the sun rises.

On the table, in the sunlight, there shouldve been some kind of animal, not this screen where each movement of my pupil writes a soundless name.

CORRECTION

The choreography needs audience, needs someone to witness its movements. The damp twilight wind slammed shut the kitchen window. She was cutting leeks at the sink when the sash colliding with the frame startled her; the shards of glass turned to fragments on the floor a few meters away. The shock made her jerk the knife across the back of her left hand. When the boy entered dressed in pajamas, hair mussedmother, what was that? his questionshe was standing there, staring at the shape of that small wound under the stream of water, as if it reminded her of some profound, lost thing. One sound, two, a counterpoint, the dark night looking out at waves, she thought. And then there was just her blood, staining the water in the sink. She brought her hand to her mouth so she wouldnt ruin the vegetable with her foul taste.

Go shower, were eating soon. And bring him down, she told the boy.

Ten minutes later they were all sitting in silence around the kitchen table. She had to quicken her breathing and open her eyes: the little wound on her hand kept her from concentrating, pulsing in the dark, like the double of another wound on the palm of the hand of a man who in her memory recoiled from a seashell, from a broken bottle, tears and sweat; she was naked, on the wave-packed sand, wet. I was another person back then, she thought.

Life here begins many times, the vocalist blurted out unexpectedly from his wheelchair.

He did so without solemnity, but with a voice not his own.

It was a little unsettling, according to the doctors, his neurological damage rendered speech impossible, but that was the third time in a year hed spoken during meditation. For an instant, the boy opened his eyes too; he and his mother exchanged a glance just as a draft swept in through the broken window and caused a distant doorthe bathroom door, she guessedto slam. Then they heard the beep, beep, beep of the alarm being deactivated at the front entrance. It was the other, returning from the recording studio. He came in carrying a paper bag, set it down in the middle of the table, and went into the kitchen. Reaching out her fingers, she removed a still-warm roll from the bag and tore it open, scanning with her eyes, in vain, for the jam. The other shut the refrigerator with his foot, sat down; he grabbed the jar of jam and set it beside her plateshe gave him a grateful smileand turned to the vocalist, offering him a sip of the beer he held in his hand.

Then the other raised the can and made a toast:

Bless Him. I finished writing the bloody score today.

The boy pinched an unlit cigarette between his lips as he applauded. The movement of his hands knocked over the milk carton, which, striking the floor, bounced back up and collided with the jar of jam. Suddenly irritated, she couldnt take her eyes off the can of beer as she attempted to clean the floor with a spoon. The other brought his hands together and bent down beside her.

The Man wanted to tell me something last night, Im sure of it, the boy blurted out.

The vocalist tried to grimace through his paralysis.

Was the show any good? she asked.

Its been proven: The Man is the greatest baritone in the history of humanity, Mother. His shows are always perfect.

Thats why hes in the bubblegum music.

The other burst out laughing at his own comment. She, all the while, watched her son speak, but couldnt understand what he was saying. Were they speaking in Chezungun again to mess with her, to exclude her? All she heard was laughter andits absurd, she said to herself, were miles from the oceanthe sound of waves breaking on the beach, swelling with wind and rain. Another spark in her memory: the beachs thick sand clinging to her thighs as she spread her legs, the others alcoholic stench on the nape of her neck, his moan in the dark: leave us alone.

I pushed through the crowd right up to the front, seriously. And there I am, transfixed, face to face with The Man, modulating the final guitar solo with the vocoder implanted in one of his molars. Then he sees me, Im sure of it. He sees me and wants to tell me something, something only he knows, something for my ears alone.