Hidden and Revealed Delights: On Vicente Luis Mora’s ‘Centroeuropa’
The Málaga Novel Prize winner’s first novel to be published in North America is out now.
Cover courtesy of Bellevue Literary Press
Purchase Centroeuropa here.
For a novel that is mostly about the death of a loved one, the horrors of war, eighteenth/nineteenth century European servitude, and grief, Vicente Luis Mora’s Centroeuropa is an absolute joy. The book begins ominously enough: “Male, Prussian, hussar soldier, frozen. That was the first body I found while digging in the frozen earth to bury my wife; I say my wife because I never knew her real name, although I will return to that later.” The narrator, a man born in a Viennese brothel named Redo Hauptshammer, is constantly revising his story. He’s going back in time and fast forwarding to the future, trying his best to get the right cadence for his tale, which is ostensibly the one we’re reading, though a few footnotes provided by a translator suggests that this book has been unearthed by someone long after Hauptshammer’s death, though who, when, or why this fictional text has been translated at all is something I was unable to solve1.
Throughout, narrative pillars are bandied about only to be discarded in favor of other memories. The past is rehashed in a haphazard manner, more like a Chris Marker film than anything following a three-act structure. Because of the way the narrator dashes off some dazzling asides instead of telling the story he constantly assures us he is writing down (“Yes, I will recount in detail the tense conversation I had with Mayor Altmayer on the day of my move to Oderbruch, shortly after first looking upon the river Oder and seeing its splendid silver ambling idly toward the north”), the novel reveals itself to be less about the plot machinations that propel, reverse, and sidewind, than something structurally like a mini Inherent Vice (plot and style-wise, the two are quite different, obviously).
As in: there’s a lot of mystery to be unraveled, toyed with, and chewed on, but this novel is really about love; what we do when it’s gone, how once we have it every other happiness pales in comparison—a high that contains within it the most tragic devastation imaginable (perhaps something inconceivable until it occurs).
So, this is a novel of tricks and turns, little deceits and false starts, but it’s also very simply about a man named Redo who has lost his wife, Odra, in a death almost comical in its randomness. As they travel together to their newly inherited land in Prussia, they happen upon a market in Mainz. An escaped French soldier runs through the area, and two grenadiers spot him. “In the crossfire, the crowd lost its mind and we began running without knowing if we were getting closer to or farther away from the danger. A stray shot from the Frenchman hit Odra,” he explains, before noting that the event: “ended our lives.”
The central conceit of the book—a man tries to bury his wife but can’t because he continually unearths soldiers of the past and future beneath his land—reminds me of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie or a similarly serious and wacky journey2. A lot of stuff—a giant, a witch, a baron’s horny daughter—gets in the way of what starts the entire shebang: Redo trying to give his wife a proper burial.
I get the sense Mora—who has won the Málaga Novel Prize (and whose translator Rahul Bery won the PEN Translates Award for Centroeuropa)—is a trickster, a lingual jester who gets thrilled by hidden hints and slippery double-meanings. Part of this, I speculate, comes from the pure pleasure of doing so. Words are a big ol’ gift; I know few endeavors more bewitching. Writing a good sentence, the actual feeling of it snapping into formation like cracking the combination of a lock, is the only thing I’ve ever experienced that’s as satisfying as a well struck golf shot. It’s why most of what I do is write and golf.
Perhaps that’s why Mora does it (writing, not golfing), but there’s also another hidden little meaning; a shrouded secret behind the secret. These crumbs are like the encounters Redo tells of throughout his narration. They’re detours, alternate routes, flashing lights that lead away from the center of this novel and the heart of the man telling its story. They’re the land he means to till, not the soldiers he discovers beneath it.
This center is buried at the tail end of the book, during a section in which Redo is listing his final observations in a numbered format, rushing to finish whatever this document is for whatever reason he’s yet to reveal. His writing is a remembrance of Odra, a way to animate someone unable to animate themselves. But, this story comes to us from Redo’s future, from a time far removed from his period of initial grieving. In recalling this battle with the dirt and the state, he’s reminded of what these buried men, dead long before they were meant to go, victims of war, have come to represent: “Those young, frozen soldiers who remain upright in my field repeat their valuable lesson to me every day: live for now, Redo, one day you will be dead like us, don’t resign yourself to a lesser life than the one you desire.” What that encompasses, Redo does not share; hopefully, because he’s living it.
Because of the inimitable brilliance of Centroeuropa, I asked Mora to provide one book, one film, and one piece of music that might serve as proper companions for his novel. He generously responded with thoughtful answers, which have been kindly translated by Rahul Bery. Check them out below, and enjoy them alongside your Centroeuropa journey.
It struck me recently that Stanley Kubrick’s movie, Barry Lyndon, is set roughly a decade before the imaginary events narrated in Centroeuropa. I realized they have an element in common: there is a clear link between my decision to exclusively use Spanish words that existed in the nineteenth century and Kubrick’s conspicuous insistence on shooting the film by candlelight. In both cases, the idea was—I think—to create a unique atmosphere. An unconscious influence? Sounds great, sign me up!
It is harder for me to choose another book connected to my novel, because I always try to do something impossible when I write: I’m compelled to create unparalleled works, weird stories that seek to provoke a “WKF!” (“What Kind of Fiction is this?”) effect on the reader. If I was forced to identify a novel that has some similarities, I might name Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo.
The ideal music to accompany Centroeuropa is a mathematical song by the Brazilian singer Chico Buarque, “Construção.” It is a metasong, a holistic, geometrically composed piece, in which the rhythm and the lyrics are mechanically adjusted to create an effect of marvelous recurrence. Centroeuropa is a novel composed as a poem, and perhaps “Construção” is that poem.
To take a page from the novelist and the fictional translator translating this fictional text, it should be noted that at first I took the translator mentioned in the novel’s footnotes (See, on page 31: “…Hauptshammer discovered four frozen Polish soldiers, in the third of several macabre findings. [Translator’s note]) to be the translator of the novel, Rahul Bery, but it turns out to be a figure working within the text itself.
Another film reference from me…in part, I think, because I’ve rarely encountered a book like this one.