Diaz In the Distance

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-911547-24-2
Verlag: Daunt Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 344 Seiten

FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018 'Like Huckleberry Finn written by Cormac McCarthy.' -- Sunday Times Håkan Söderström is a man who has become a legend. Giant in size, rumoured to be bloodthirsty and fearless, he is known simply as 'the Hawk'. But behind this myth is a tale of loss and survival. As a young man Håkan is sent from Gothenburg with his brother Linus to seek their fortunes in New York. In the chaos of the port, he is separated from Linus and finds himself instead on a ship bound for California. He speaks no English and has no money but determined to find his brother, Håkan sets out on a journey east. As he travels on foot he moves against the tide of history, experiencing the Gold Rush and its effects, encountering capitalists and colonialists, explorers and early scientists, and witnessing the formation of America and the betrayal of its dream. In the Distance is a novel about radical foreignness - about being lost in a country that does not yet exist. As Håkan confronts desert and mountains, he is thrown between the threat of violence and devastating loneliness, all the while keeping the image of his brother, and the hope of companionship, in the distance. 'Singular and deeply affecting... In the Distance is a brutal, sad, tender coming-of-age story, set in a historical past that feels both familiar and at the same time like nothing we've ever encountered before.' -- Guardian 'Richly drawn and something like Huckleberry Finn written by Cormac McCarthy: an adventure story as well as a meditation on the meaning of home.'-- Sunday Times 'An extraordinary epic tale of a lone man's journey into the heart of the American frontier... Ultimately it is not his quest to be reunited with his brother that impels the novel: it is a good old-fashioned yearning of the human spirit, and a beautifully commodious meditation on its absolute unknowability.' -- Financial Times 'Exquisite: assured, moving and masterful, as profound and precise an evocation of loneliness as any book I've ever read.' -- Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies

Hernan Diaz was born in Argentina and grew up in Argentina and Sweden. His first novel, In the Distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2018, and was the winner of the Saroyan International Prize, the Cabell Award, the Prix Page America, and the New American Voices Award. It was also a Publishers Weekly Top 10 Book of the Year, one of Lit Hub's Top 20 Books of the Decade, and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He is the recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award. Diaz has published stories and essays in Cabinet, The New York Times, The Kenyon Review,Playboy, Granta, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. He lives in New York, where he edits an academic journal at Columbia University.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Diaz, Hernan

Leseproben

1.

HÅKAN SÖDERSTRÖM was born on a farm north of Lake Tystnaden, in Sweden. The exhausted land his family worked belonged to a wealthy man they had never met, although he regularly collected his harvest through his estate manager. With crops failing year after year, the landlord had tightened his fist, forcing the Söderströms to subsist on mushrooms and berries they foraged for in the woods, and eels and pikes they caught in the lake (where Håkan, encouraged by his father, acquired a taste for ice baths). Most families in the region led similar lives, and within a few years, as their neighbours abandoned their homes, heading for Stockholm or farther south, the Söderströms became increasingly isolated, until they lost all contact with people – except for the manager, who came a few times a year to collect his dues. The youngest and eldest sons fell ill and died, leaving only Håkan and his brother Linus, four years his senior.

They lived like castaways. Days passed without a word being uttered in the house. The boys spent as much time as they could out in the woods or in the abandoned farmhouses, where Linus told Håkan story after story – adventures he claimed to have lived, accounts of exploits supposedly heard first hand from their heroic protagonists, and narratives of remote places he somehow seemed to know in detail. Given their seclusion – and the fact that they did not know how to read – the source of all these tales could only have been Linus’s prodigious imagination. Yet, however outlandish the stories, Håkan never doubted his brother’s words. Perhaps because Linus always defended him unconditionally and never hesitated to take the blame and the blows for any of his brother’s small misdoings, Håkan trusted him without reservation. It is true that he most likely would have died without Linus, who always made sure he had enough to eat, managed to keep the house warm while their parents were away, and distracted him with stories when food and fuel were scarce.

Everything changed when the mare became pregnant. During one of his brief visits, the manager told Erik, Håkan’s father, to make sure everything went well – they had already lost too many horses to the famine, and his master would welcome an addition to his dwindling stable. Time went on, and the mare got abnormally big. Erik was not surprised when she gave birth to twins. Perhaps for the first time in his life, he decided to lie. Together with the boys, he cleared a spot in the woods and built a hidden pen, to which he took one of the foals as soon as it was weaned. A few weeks later, the manager came and claimed its brother. Erik kept his colt hidden, making sure it grew strong and healthy. When the time came, he sold it to a miller in a distant town where nobody knew him. The evening of his return, Erik told his sons they were leaving for America in two days. The money from the colt was enough for only two fares. And anyway, he was not going to flee like a criminal. Their mother said nothing.

Håkan and Linus, who had never even seen a picture of a city, hurried down to Gothenburg, hoping to spend a day or two there, but they barely made it in time to get on their ship to Portsmouth. Once on board, they divided up their money, in case something happened to one of them. During this leg of the trip, Linus told Håkan everything about the wonders that awaited them in America. They spoke no English, so the name of the city they were headed for was an abstract talisman to them: ‘Nujårk.’

They arrived in Portsmouth much later than expected, and everyone was in a great hurry to get on the rowboats that took them to shore. As soon as Håkan and Linus set foot on the wharf, they were sucked in by the current of people bustling up and down the main road. They walked side by side, almost jogging. Now and then, Linus turned to his brother to teach him something about the oddities around them. Both of them were trying to take it all in as they looked for their next ship, which was to leave that very afternoon. Merchants, incense, tattoos, wagons, fiddlers, steeples, sailors, sledgehammers, flags, steam, beggars, turbans, goats, mandolin, cranes, jugglers, baskets, sailmakers, billboards, harlots, smokestacks, whistles, organ, weavers, hookahs, peddlers, peppers, puppets, fistfight, cripples, feathers, conjuror, monkeys, soldiers, chestnuts, silk, dancers, cockatoo, preachers, hams, auctions, accordionist, dice, acrobats, belfries, carpets, fruit, clotheslines. Håkan looked to his right, and his brother was gone.

They had just passed a group of Chinese seamen having lunch, and Linus had told his brother some facts about their country and its traditions. They had kept walking, gaping and wide-eyed, looking at the scenes around them, and then Håkan had turned to Linus, but he was no longer there. He looked around, backtracked, walked from the kerb to the wall, ran forward, and then back to their landing place. Their rowboat was gone. He returned to the spot where they had lost each other. He got on a crate, short-breathed and trembling, screamed his brother’s name, and looked down at the torrent of people. A salty fizz on his tongue quickly became a numbing tingle that spread over his entire body. Barely able to steady his quaking knees, he rushed to the nearest pier and asked some sailors in a dinghy for Nujårk. The sailors did not understand. After many attempts, he tried ‘Amerika.’ They got that immediately but shook their heads. Håkan went pier by pier asking for Amerika. Finally, after several failures, someone said ‘America’ back to him and pointed to a rowboat, and then to a ship anchored about three cable lengths off the shore. Håkan looked into the boat. Linus was not there. Perhaps he had already boarded the ship. A sailor offered Håkan his hand, and he got on.

As soon as they got to the ship, someone demanded and took his money and then showed him to a dark corner below deck where, among berths and chests and bundles and barrels, under swinging lanterns hanging from beams and ringbolts, loud clusters of emigrants tried to settle in and claim some small space of the cabbage- and stable-smelling steerage as their own for the long trip. He looked for Linus among the silhouettes distorted by the quivering light, making his way through screaming and sleeping babies, laughing and haggard women, and sturdy and weeping men. With increasing despair, he rushed back on deck, through waving crowds and busy sailors. The ship was clearing of visitors. The gangplank was removed. He shouted his brother’s name. The anchor was lifted; the ship moved; the crowds cheered.

EILEEN BRENNAN found him starved and feverish a few days after they had left, and she and her husband, James, a coal miner, cared for him as if he were one of their own children, gently forcing him to eat and nursing him back to health. He refused to speak.

After some time, Håkan finally left the steerage cabin but shied away from all company, spending his days scanning the horizon.

Although they had left England in the spring, and summer should now have settled in, it was getting colder every day. Weeks went by, and Håkan still refused to speak. Around the time Eileen gave him a shapeless cape she had sewn out of rags, they spotted land.

They steered into unusually brown waters and anchored in front of a pale, low city. Håkan looked at the faded pink and ochre buildings, searching in vain for the landmarks Linus had described to him. Rowboats packed with crates shuttled back and forth between the ship and the clay-coloured shore. Nobody disembarked. Increasingly anxious, Håkan asked an idle sailor if that was America. Those were the first words he uttered since shouting his brother’s name in Portsmouth. The sailor said yes, that was America. Holding back his tears, Håkan asked if they were in New York. The sailor looked at Håkan’s lips as he produced, again, that glob of molten sounds, ‘Nujårk?’ While Håkan’s frustration mounted, a smile on the seaman’s face widened until it became a peal of laughter.

‘New York? No! Not New York,’ the sailor said. ‘Buenos Aires.’ He laughed again, hitting his knee with one hand and shaking Håkan’s shoulder with the other.

That evening, they sailed on.

Over dinner, Håkan tried to find out from the Irish couple where they were and how long the trip to New York would be. It took them a while to understand each other, but in the end, there was no room for doubt. Through signs and with the aid of a small piece of lead with which Eileen drew a rough map of the world, Håkan understood that they were an eternity away from New York – and getting farther from it every instant. He saw they were sailing to the end of the world, to get around Cape Horn, and then head up north. That was the first time he heard the word ‘California’.

After they had braved the wild waters of Cape Horn, the weather got milder, and the passengers grew eager. Plans were made, prospects were discussed, partnerships and parties were created. Once he started to pay attention to the conversations, Håkan realised that most of the passengers discussed only one subject – gold.

They finally cast anchor in what seemed to be, strangely, a busy ghost harbour: it was full of half-sunken ships looted and abandoned by crews that had deserted for the goldfields. But the derelict vessels had been occupied by squatters and even converted to floating taverns and...