Bad Handwriting

By Sara Mesa

From the author of the highly acclaimed Four by Four and Among the Hedges comes a collection of unsettling, captivating stories.

The eleven stories in this collection approach themes of childhood and adolescence, guilt and redemption, power and freedom. There are children who resist authority and experience the process of growing up with shock, and loneliness; alienated young girls whose rebellion lies under the surface—subterranean, furious and impotent; people who are tormented—or not—by regret and doubt, addicted to feelings of culpability; men who take advantage of women and adults who exercise power over children with a disturbing degree of control; kids abandoned by their parents; the suicide of the elderly and the young; lives that hide crimes—both real and imagined. Eschewing cosmopolitanism in favor of the micro-world of her characters, Mesa depicts a reality that is messy and disturbing, on even the smallest scale of an individual life, a single family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Letter
• Release date: Jul 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9781948830737

Sara Mesa

Sara Mesa (Madrid, 1976) desde niña reside en Sevilla. En Anagrama se han publicado desde 2012 las novelas Cuatro por cuatro (finalista del Premio Herralde de Novela): «Una escritura desnuda y fría, repleta de imágenes poderosas que desasosiegan en la misma medida que magnetizan» (Marta Sanz, El Confidencial); Cicatriz (Premio El Ojo Crítico de Narrativa): «Una verdadera revelación» (J. M. Guelbenzu, El País); «Sara Mesa levanta una literatura de alto voltaje trabajada con precisión de orfebre» (Rafael Chirbes); la recuperada Un incendio invisible: «Demuestra ser una creadora muy exigente. Una novela que funciona como los buenos cuentos pues contiene mucho más de lo que dice» (J. M. Pozuelo Yvancos, ABC); Cara de pan: «Una pequeña obra maestra de la narrativa» (J. Ernesto Ayala-Dip, Qué Leer); Un amor: «Sus aristas se presentan bajo una prosa de limpieza desconcertante, escueta, ágil: se lee con la velocidad que asociamos al disfrute, pero al cerrarlo nos encontramos desamparados. Una novela magnífica» (Nadal Suau, El Cultural) y La familia:«Ha escrito algunas de las historias más turbias de la literatura actual. Ahora arremete contra los falsos sueños de bienestar en La familia… En su nuevo libro, el humor matiza el desasosiego que recorre toda su obra… Existe una constante en su obra desde sus inicios que, además de con los abusos de poder, tiene que ver con la doble vida de los personajes.» (Laura Fernández, El País - Babelia) el muy celebrado volumen de relatos Mala letra: «Cuatro por cuatro, Cicatriz y Mala letra de Sara Mesa protagonizan desde hace meses la escena literaria española» (Christopher Domínguez Michael, Letras Libres); y el breve ensayo Silencio administrativo: «Una reflexión sobre el impacto brutal de la pobreza en los individuos que la sufren y sobre las actitudes imperantes frente a ellos en nuestra sociedad. Especialmente indicado para quienes piensan que ellos no tienen prejuicios» (Edurne Portela, El País).

Book preview

Bad Handwriting

PRAISE FOR SARA MESA

"With short, propulsive chapters, Sara Mesa creates an unforgettable gothic landscape, centered on the mysterious and menacing Wybrany College, that twists in ways that unsettle and thrill. In Four by Four, Mesa’s sentences are clear as glass, but when you look through you will be terrified by what you see."

—Laura van den Berg

"The atmospheric unraveling of the mystery will keep you turning the page; the ending will leave you stunned—Mesa’s Four by Four is a tautly written literary thriller that juxtaposes the innocence of children with the fetish of control; a social parable that warns against the silence of oppression and isolation through its disquieting, sparse prose."

—Kelsey Westenberg, Seminary Co-op

"Stylistically, Four by Four’s narrative structure is both dazzling and dizzying, as its perfect pacing only enhances the metastasizing dread and dis-ease. . . . Mesa exposes the thin veneer of venerability to be hiding something menacing and unforgivable—and Four by Four lays it bare for all the world to see."

—Jeremy Garber, Powell’s Books

What can I say about a story in which everything works? … A new author that will surprise us further in future.

—Sergio Sancor, Libros y literatura

Space

OTHER BOOKS BY SARA MESA

Among the Hedges

Four by Four

Scars

TitlePage

Originally published in Spanish as Mala letra by Anagrama

Copyright © 2016 by Sara Mesa

Translation copyright © 2022 by Katie Whittemore

First Open Letter edition, 2022

All rights reserved

The epigraphs at the beginning of the seven sections belong to Eeyore, the unforgettable character from The World of Pooh by A. A. Milne.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request

ISBN-13: 9781948830553

Ebook ISBN:

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Governor of New York State and the New York State Legislature.

Support for the translation of this book was provided by Acción Cultural Española, AC/E

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

Cover Design by Anna Morrison

Interior Design by Anuj Mathur

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

www.openletterbooks.org

CONTENTS

The Screech Owl

Mármol

Just a Few Millimeters

Creamy Milk and Crunchy Chocolate

Stonewords

Nothing New

White People

Papá Is Made of Rubber

What Is Going on with Us

Cattle Tyrants

Mustelids

THE SCREECH OWL

From the top of the hill the girl turned and saw the others around the picnic table. The conversation was an unintelligible murmur off in the distance, like the buzzing of bees. The sun was setting and the light was vanishing from the pines, revealing deep greens and hollows that had remained hidden during the day. She breathed in the air—damp earth, lavender and rosemary, cow shit flattened by a car tire—and returned to the others, lagging. The snap of the pine needles breaking beneath her feet grew quieter as she drew near, strangled by the voice of the aunt, a voice from the depths of an earthen jar, deep, strong, stony. The others were gathered around her, finishing up the last bits of supper, seeking her permission, waiting their turn with restrained scrupulousness. The aunt always knew exactly what had to be done and the proper steps to do it. She had slowly dished out the butter, the foie gras, the slices of toasted bread, the coffee, allowing no one to disturb her ritual. She performed it deliberately, unhurried, as if time itself was obliged to mold to her pace. Her words filled the esplanade and extended beyond the smooth boggy hills. The girl stopped to watch her from a few yards away. It was her twenty-second birthday and this was the entirety of the celebration they granted her: pine forest, cars, supper in the countryside, a family gathering with old friends that weren’t even hers.

In one of the cars off to the side, her uncle was clipping his toenails, his skinny legs hanging out the door. There was an almost religious concentration in the rigid set of his jaw.

Time to start picking up, he said when he’d finished, looking at the horizon. It’s getting dark.

He tucked the clippers in his shirt pocket and turned his baggy eyes to the table. The aunt went on talking as if she hadn’t heard. Her speech—clipped, abrupt—did not allow for interruptions. She had extremely fine wrinkles above her lip. From a distance, they gave the impression of a very sparse but soldierly mustache.

"These days everyone talks about solidarity and commitment. There are thousands of campaigns and protests and petitions for one cause or another. But you have to take care of your own first, isn’t that right? Helping people from far away, bah, that’s easy. Give to charity? Send old clothes to Africa? Sponsor a kid? There’s no merit in any of it. What is hard is being there, every second, for your own people. Looking out for them, not letting them down, teaching them to carry on, not letting them get lost or off track. Now that’s really doing something, the rest doesn’t count."

The couple sitting next to her—a thick and bosomy redhead and her husband, small and reserved—nodded as they chewed. They’d been the aunt and uncle’s neighbors for many years and were familiar with her ways. They kept their mouths shut and showed their agreement with slight movements of their heads. A boy about six years old sat a little way away. He was dark-haired, freckled, lost in thought, an absorbed look on his impassive face. He ate his toasted baguette indifferently, throwing away the burnt edges of the bread. The redhead admonished him with a wink, but the aunt caught on immediately.

Oh come on! Eat nicely, would you? You’ll be skin and bones if you carry on like that! Don’t play with your food!

She changed her tone and turned to the redhead, narrowing her eyes. She emphasized certain words, as if the mere uttering of them disgusted her.

"If it were up to him, he’d eat nothing but junk. Parents these days don’t make any effort. A nice piece of toast for an afternoon snack? Oh no, that’s old-fashioned! A donut or slice of pizza is so much better. His mother pays no attention to him. Typical of that part of the family—must be genetic. Women having babies young and then abandoning them. We raised this one, too," she added, nodding toward the boy.

The boy watched his mother closely as she continued to make her way down the hill, staring at the toes of her shoes. The girl looked up and smiled at him weakly. He stood up, his growing body skinny and awkward, and with the toast still in hand approached the uncle, who was putting out the last embers of the campfire. A few coals still burned among the charred logs. The man threw fistfuls of earth on them, taking care not to dirty himself. A magpie flew overhead, the sound of its caw suspended in the air.

Silvio’s not here, the boy announced.

The aunt looked at him. Her eyes blazed. The boy flushed. His freckles stood out even more against his skin.

Where is he? she shrieked.

Nobody knew how to respond. They’d already folded the table, loaded the cars, put the trash in bags. The uncle closed the trunk of his Fiat and rubbed his hands together. They’d have to take a look around, he said looking at the sky. Pink and mauve clouds broke apart, admitting the last rays of light. An inhospitable dampness rose from the ground.

"A look around? Doesn’t he know what time it is? What’s that nephew of yours thinking?"

The redhead tried to calm her. He must have gotten dis­tracted, that’s all. Silvio knew the countryside well, her husband observed from off to the side, stepping on the smoking remnants of the fire. He wasn’t a kid anymore, he wasn’t going to get lost.

I know he’s not going to get lost! But we can’t wait around for him forever! We have to go!

The boy looked around and in a soft voice suggested that they call his mobile. Call his mobile! brayed the aunt. Everyone knew they didn’t have service there. The neighbors looked at her for a moment, unsettled, not knowing what to do. The uncle opened the trunk again and busied himself rearranging the bags. The aunt threw a shawl over her shoulders, as if all the cold in the air had suddenly descended on her alone, wrinkled her brow and continued to mutter without taking her eyes off the path.

I’ll go look for him, the girl told her aunt. I’ll take the boy.

She didn’t wait for permission. She took the boy by the hand and started off toward the hill, leaving the two older couples behind in the mist of the growing dusk. The screeching of the magpies cut across the sky. She tried to match her steps to those of her son.

They called for him several times, first in one direction, then the other. There was no response from Silvio. The girl grabbed the boy by the arm and forced him to walk faster. They would probably find him next to the creek, or what little was left of the creek: a broken stream of chocolate-colored, stinking water, bordered by cattails and yellowing reeds, the slippery and swampy land pockmarked with rabbit burrows and poisonous mushrooms, their stems bent by disease. The girl remembered that as children they had caught frogs there, armed with a colander. As the eldest, she’d been the one to go into the water—cold, biting, green—taking care not to splash too much, while Silvio waited, crouched on the bank, keeping quiet with absolute seriousness. Once they’d trapped the frogs, they put them in glass jars filled with water and examined them closely. The frogs almost always ended up suffocating to death, they didn’t really know why. The image of a frog floating in the water, its thick legs limp, was one of indescribable sadness. The girl shook off the memory. After all, she thought, there hadn’t been frogs there in a long time.

The boy shouted, his throat tight: it was a sharp, child-like call, tinged with uncertainty. There was no answer.

It’s getting dark, mamá he whispered. Let’s go back. Tito Silvio isn’t out here.

The girl stopped to think. They could cross the creek by jumping on some stones without too much risk of getting wet. On the other side, the forest stretched out darkly, impenetrable, rustling with pine needles and the fallen bud scales of eucalyptus trees. Or they could stay on this side, and continue the search by following the stream until reaching the little dirt road they’d passed that morning upon arriving, the cars still clean and full of food.

Come, she said. We’re going to cross the creek.

The boy looked behind him fearfully. The purring of a whip-poor-will, the darkness rushing toward him. He swallowed and, grabbing onto the girl, clambered down the slope. They moved forward slowly, holding hands, their shoes sinking in the mud, until they reached the edge of the water. The stream was almost nonexistent; the middle of the creek couldn’t have been more than a foot and a half deep. They could hardly make out the stones, flat and muddied, in the shadows. The girl tried to calm the boy. Just step really carefully, she told him, put his feet exactly where she put hers. Silvio would be on the other side, she was certain.

The creek stunk of stagnant water and rot. The boy whimpered but the girl squeezed his hand and made her way from stone to stone. They went slowly and silently, so as not to lose their concentration. When they stopped talking, the forest filled with sounds: the rustling of reeds, the cry of a small owl, an animal—a rabbit, a rat—running through the rushes, the impossibly far-off rumble of a car.

Silvio! yelled the boy, desperate. Then he slipped, falling into the water.

She didn’t have anything to clean him with. The girl used her own T-shirt to wipe the mud off his legs. His sneakers were dripping; she dried them as best she could and he put them back on. The boy reeked of dirty water. She consoled him for several minutes, humming and cooing. When they stood up, night had fallen completely.

Mamá, shouldn’t we go back?

The boy peered into the darkness of the forest, his pupils dilated. Disheveled locks of hair fell over his ears. His profile blurred into the blackness.

Don’t worry. We’re going the right way. I’m sure we’ll find Silvio out here.

They called out several more times, feeling their way through the shadows of the trees. Cold and shining silhouettes could still be made out, bathed in moonlight and the glow from some nearby town. The boy moved even closer to the girl and they continued for a few yards, until they couldn’t go any further. They stayed silent and still, their feet on a cushioned and invisible blanket of leaves.

The question was whether they should try to go back. Crossing the creek again was not an option. By now the forest was a camera obscura, where all identity—of a tree, a thicket, a stone, a puddle—was entirely dissolved. Small insects landed on their exposed calves. All around them were the sounds of leaves and branches creaking swiftly, nocturnal rodents seeking new hiding places as they fled the barn owls. The reedy, tremulous, drawn-out shriek of a screech owl sounded from a distance, then drew