The Country of Toó

By Rodrigo Rey Rosa and Stephen Henighan

A Crime Reads Best International Crime Fiction of 2023 • One of Crime Reads most anticipated LatinX Horror and Crime Fiction of 2023

This sumptuously written thriller asks probing questions about how we live with each other and with our planet.

Raised on his wits on the streets of Central America, the Cobra, a young debt collector and gang enforcer, has never had the chance to discern between right and wrong, until he’s assigned the murder of Polo, a prominent human rights activist—and his friend. When his conscience gives him pause and his patrón catches on, a remote Mayan community offers the Cobra a potential refuge, but the people there are up against predatory mining companies. With danger encroaching, the Cobra is forced to confront his violent past and make a decision about what he’s willing to risk in the future, and who it will be for.

Following the Cobra, Polo, a faction of drug-dealing oligarchs, and Jacobo, a child caught in the crosshairs, Rey Rosa maps an extensive web of corruption upheld by decades of political oppression. A scathing indictment of exploitation in all its forms, The Country of Toó is a gripping account of what it means to consider societal change under the constant threat of violence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Biblioasis
• Release date: Jul 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781771965156

Rodrigo Rey Rosa

Rodrigo Rey Rosa was born in Guatemala in 1958. He immigrated to New York in 1980, and in 1982 he moved to Morocco. American expatriate writer Paul Bowles, with whom Rey Rosa had been corresponding, translated his first three books into English. Rey Rosa has based many of his writings and stories on legends and myths indigenous to Latin America and North Africa. Of his many works, seven have been translated into English: The Beggar’s Knife, Dust on Her Tongue, The Pelcari Project, The Good Cripple, The African Shore, Severina, and now Chaos, a Fable. He currently lives in Guatemala City.

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The Country of Toó

Rodrigo Rey Rosa

Translated from the Spanish

by Stephen Henighan

BIBLIOASIS

Windsor, Ontario

Biblioasis International Translation Series

General Editor: Stephen Henighan

1    I Wrote Stone: The Selected Poetry of Ryszard Kapuściński (Poland)

Translated by Diana Kuprel and Marek Kusiba

2    Good Morning Comrades by Ondjaki (Angola)

Translated by Stephen Henighan

3    Kahn & Engelmann by Hans Eichner (Austria-Canada)

Translated by Jean M. Snook

4    Dance with Snakes by Horacio Castellanos Moya (El Salvador)

Translated by Lee Paula Springer

5    Black Alley by Mauricio Segura (Quebec)

Translated by Dawn M. Cornelio

6    The Accident by Mihail Sebastian (Romania)

Translated by Stephen Henighan

7    Love Poems by Jaime Sabines (Mexico)

Translated by Colin Carberry

8    The End of the Story by Liliana Heker (Argentina)

Translated by Andrea G. Labinger

9    The Tuner of Silences by Mia Couto (Mozambique)

Translated by David Brookshaw

10   For as Far as the Eye Can See by Robert Melançon (Quebec)

Translated by Judith Cowan

11   Eucalyptus by Mauricio Segura (Quebec)

Translated by Donald Winkler

12   Granma Nineteen and the Soviet’s Secret by Ondjaki (Angola)

Translated by Stephen Henighan

13   Montreal Before Spring by Robert Melançon (Quebec)

Translated by Donald McGrath

14   Pensativities: Essays and Provocations by Mia Couto (Mozambique)

Translated by David Brookshaw

15   Arvida by Samuel Archibald (Quebec)

Translated by Donald Winkler

16   The Orange Grove by Larry Tremblay (Quebec)

Translated by Sheila Fischman

17   The Party Wall by Catherine Leroux (Quebec)

Translated by Lazer Lederhendler

18   Black Bread by Emili Teixidor (Catalonia)

Translated by Peter Bush

19   Boundary by Andrée A. Michaud (Quebec)

Translated by Donald Winkler

20   Red, Yellow, Green by Alejandro Saravia (Bolivia-Canada)

Translated by María José Giménez

21   Bookshops: A Reader’s History by Jorge Carrión (Spain)

Translated by Peter Bush

22   Transparent City by Ondjaki (Angola)

Translated by Stephen Henighan

23   Oscar by Mauricio Segura (Quebec)

Translated by Donald Winkler

24   Madame Victoria by Catherine Leroux (Quebec)

Translated by Lazer Lederhendler

25   Rain and Other Stories by Mia Couto (Mozambique)

Translated by Eric M. B. Becker

26   The Dishwasher by Stéphane Larue (Quebec)

Translated by Pablo Strauss

27   Mostarghia by Maya Ombasic (Quebec)

Translated by Donald Winkler

28   Dead Heat by Benedek Totth (Hungary)

Translated by Ildikó Noémi Nagy

29   If You Hear Me by Pascale Quiviger (Quebec)

Translated by Lazer Lederhendler

30   The Unseen by Roy Jacobsen (Norway)

Translated by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw

31   You Will Love What You Have Killed by Kevin Lambert (Quebec)

Translated by Donald Winkler

32   Against Amazon and Other Essays by Jorge Carrión (Spain)

Translated by Peter Bush

33   Sea Loves Me: Selected Stories by Mia Couto (Mozambique)

Translated by David Brookshaw with Eric M. B. Becker

34   On Time and Water by Andri Snær Magnason (Iceland)

Translated by Lytton Smith

35   White Shadow by Roy Jacobsen (Norway)

Translated by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw

36   The Music Game by Stéfanie Clermont (Ontario)

Translated by JC Sutcliffe

37   Eyes of the Rigel by Roy Jacobsen (Norway)

Translated by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw

38   Querelle of Roberval by Kevin Lambert (Quebec)

Translated by Donald Winkler

39   Just a Mother by Roy Jacobsen (Norway)

Translated by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw

40   The World at My Back by Thomas Melle (Germany)

Translated by Luise von Flotow

41   The Country of Toó by Rodrigo Rey Rosa (Guatemala)

Translated by Stephen Henighan

Contents

Biblioasis International Translation Series

Book One: The Round Man

I

Present of the Future

II

Smart, Steadfast, and Scrubbed

III

The Round Man

IV

Tityus discrepans

V

Freaking Out

Book Two: Interval

I

Ixtantlalok

II

The World of the Dead

Book Three: Return to Toó

I

Kastajinem

II

An Act of Magic

III

Ermenegilda

IV

Shamans for Hire

Acknowledgements

Copyright

For my friends Jovita and Gladys Tzul Tzul

Book One

The Round Man

I

Present of the Future

The mansion with the thatched-palm roof on a promontory among coconut trees overlooked a beach of volcanic sand, a straight line running from where the sun rose to where it set. Again and again the foam of the big waves that came to die on the shore sketched evaporating white fans against the black sand. Behind the house were channels of still, murky water—a breeding ground for crabs, catfish, and four-eyed fish—as long and straight as the beach, opened by the nanny’s great-great-great-great-grandparents to transport their merchandise, in cayucos, from Tapachula in Mexico to Sonsonate in El Salvador, as she told it, even though the house’s owner, a rich man schooled in a very different history, contradicted her. Beyond the canal, from the second floor, you could see saltwater lagoons and immense pasture lands and sugar cane plantations and, even further back, a chain of volcanoes. At midday the sand got so hot that if you walked on it barefoot, your feet blistered. But in the evening, when the sun turned red before sinking into the sea, you could play on the lukewarm sand, chasing crabs that ran up the beach to hide in their holes or descended the sandbar that was smoothed by the waves in the gleam of reflected sunlight. Sometimes at night the mansion filled with people. They arrived from the other houses strung along the beach, or made the trip from the capital by car or helicopter.

1

This house is drunk! Jacobito shouted. Seated around a long table in the corridor of the rustic mansion on that Pacific beach, the adults couldn’t stop laughing. A wave that hit the breakwater harder than those that had come before was heard above the laughter. A pause: silence.

We’re just short of midnight, Jacobo’s mother, a grey-eyed blonde woman, said.

Why are we short? the child wanted to know.

The adults laughed again.

He was the only child in the house on New Year’s Eve, and his question had made him the centre of all the ladies’ attention. His laughter was cutting, contagious. He liked being the centre of attention.

His mother took him in her arms to sit him on her lap while his father pulled a bottle of champagne from a bucket of ice. He used a dishcloth to dry it off before beginning to struggle with the mushroom-shaped cork.

Twelve! Eleven! Ten! Nine! Eight . . . !

The adults devoured black grapes. Each second, they swallowed one from the three bowls lined up in the middle of the table.

What’s going on? the child said, but nobody paid attention to him. I want some too!

Zero!

The cork came out of the bottle with a pum! and a stream of foam. Fireworks lit up the sky, and in the night the explosions multiplied. Afraid, Jacobito hugged his mother.

It’s all right, my love.

Happy New Year!

Happy Year of the Dog!

To the Future! his father said and lifted his glass and clinked it against the glass of the gentleman they called the Future.

Hugs, full glasses, and foam overflowing onto the table; laughter, toasts, and more hugs and kisses.

Doña Matilde, a K’iche’ matron and Jacobo’s nanny, came out of the kitchen and approached the table. The nanny accepted the glass of champagne that the lady of the house offered her and took a small sip.

Thank you, Doña Ana, she said. Happy New Year.

Jacobo, his mother said. Say goodnight and off to bed.

The child protested.

His father: Let him stay a little longer. He’s having a good time, isn’t he?

Let him stay, said one of the adults, who had given him a little plane that could really fly as a Christmas present. On Jacobo’s last saint’s day his father had taken the whole family, including the nanny, for a helicopter ride. He owned various light planes and helicopters. He made his living off them, Jacobo had overheard, though he couldn’t figure out what it meant to make your living off planes and helicopters.

All right. You can go to bed when the fireworks are over, his mother said.

Doña Matilde carried the child to the balcony. In the west, in a very black sky above even blacker water, the explosions and outpourings of light continued.

The sky is drunk! the child shouted and let out his nervous little laugh.

2

In spite of his late night, Jacobo woke up early; the whole house was still sleeping. He reached with one hand for an overnight bag that hung from the railing of his bunk bed, where he had put some of the toys he’d received for Christmas. He took out a scuba diving mask. Some flippers. A mechanical dolphin and its remote control. The Future had given it to him. He had been visiting the family a lot recently.

It’s too much! his mother had said a week earlier when Jacobo opened the package under the tree. And to her husband, as a reprimand, Really, he shouldn’t have.

The general? Maybe he should have given him money. That’s what he was thinking of doing.

No, of course not!

What’s money? Jacobo asked.

His father showed him a piece of orangeish paper.

Look.

The child took it. He looked at the pictures: a volcano, a bird with a large tail, a pyramid. He drew it close to his nose.

No! his mother said. It’s dirty. It’s the dirtiest thing you can imagine.

She took the bill away from the child and returned it to his father, who said, There’s no need to exaggerate.

Is it dirtier than poo? the child asked.

Yes, his mother said. It passes from hand to hand, and people never wash their hands.

Sure! His father laughed. And in a low voice: But money can be laundered. Poo, on the other hand, can’t be.

It’s not funny, she said, even though the child and his father were roaring with laughter.

What’s the future? the child asked.

What hasn’t happened yet.

Something else he couldn’t understand. There were more and more things like that.

He turned back towards the window; through the mosquito net and beyond the plumes of the palm trees, he could see the sky at dawn and a long fringe of lead that was the sea. The roar of the waves transported him to a world no one else knew; he himself was creating it in that moment, with the ease and nonchalance of a little god. It was a vast world—much broader than the beach of black sand and the sea—and he was in the middle of it. Suddenly, he couldn’t stand the urge to urinate any longer.

The nanny, who slept in the lower bunk, heard him stir and got up to help him down. She accompanied him to the bathroom, then gave him his breakfast of cereal and milk at the low kitchen table only he used. Jacobo set the dolphin, which was the size of a baby, in the little chair at his side, and the woman began to wash the dishes from the New Year’s party, which hadn’t ended until close to dawn. As she scrubbed, she complained about the heat; as always, she wore her traditional Toó dress: wraparound skirt, sash, and huipil. Her face and neck were sweating copiously.

Jacobo got up from the low table with the dolphin and left the kitchen. He went to his room and reviewed the rest of his toys. He couldn’t carry them all, so he left the flippers and the remote control, which he still didn’t know how to use. He crossed the hall and went downstairs to the open space of the main floor. He climbed into one of the hammocks and pushed off with his foot to set himself swinging, the dolphin in his arms. Now and then he closed his eyes and imagined he was swimming in the sea, far out from the coast, far from everything, at the side of a real dolphin.

Soaked in sweat, he woke to the sound of the big kids, who had arrived with their parents to continue the party. Between the big thatched-roof house and the waves that reared up to crash onto the sand, which his father said were as dangerous as tigers, was the freshwater swimming pool where Jacobo had learned to swim. On a court behind the pool, the big kids were playing volleyball. Upstairs the parents were eating breakfast and talking, as they almost always did, about something called politics. It was a game in which anything was allowed. It was also a dangerous game. They liked the danger, he had discovered to his satisfaction. Somebody put on music with guitars and drums. He danced a few beats, moving his pelvis as he had seen his elders do. The nanny was asleep in the other hammock a few steps from his.

He stepped from the shade of the thatched roof into the sunlight, which dazzled him, and stood there for a moment, blinking, until he saw the pelicans flying over the crests of the waves, which were huge at that time of day. He didn’t want to play volleyball. The ball was too hard. He went back to the hammock for the mask and the dolphin. He ran to the pool, no longer full as it had been last night. He walked slowly down the emerald-coloured steps. He put the dolphin in the lukewarm water, gave it a shove. Dolphins were related to people, and now and then they needed to come up for air, his father had told him, but they breathed through a little hole in their backs.

The water was up to his shoulders. He already knew how to swim when the pool was full and the water was over his head. The dolphin, which had reached the middle of the pool, sank. He decided to go after it. When he came out he would be very close to the court where the big kids were playing.

He started to dog-paddle. He heard the nanny’s voice behind him.

Jacobo! she shouted. Get out of there!

He ducked his head under the water to hide and become a dolphin. He would go for his playmate. Wriggling his legs and torso, he kept swimming, hardly hearing the nanny’s non-stop shouting. But before he could reach the opposite end of the half-empty pool, the drain where the water swirled around sucked him towards the bottom, as it had done with the toy now trapped in the grate. Before any of the guests—hearing the shouts of the nanny, who, not knowing how to swim, could do nothing more than run back and forth at the side of the pool—could jump down from the balcony onto the sand, run to the pool, and dive into the water to rescue him, the child had lost consciousness.

3

In the world to which he returned—a world which, more than the world that he had left behind, was one of his own invention—there were words, but the connections between them were missing. There were faces and smiles and food in his mouth. Excrement and cleansing water. Noises and colours. Caresses and more of one thing or another. And when something was lacking, anger. Like the moment when he understood that his mother wasn’t there anymore. He shouted for her for a long time, but she didn’t come.

When she had still been there, she had driven them in her car, which smelled of leather and perfume, taking him and his nanny out for a spin or to buy food. When she left, the outings came to an end.

Soon a man came who was taller and stronger than his father and had a big dark face. His name was Rafael but they called him the Cobra. His way of talking was different. He had a hoarse, resonant voice. The Cobra made Jacobito think of a lion or a tiger. He felt safe in his company. He daydreamed about the Cobra helping him get his mother back.

One very rainy day the Cobra brought to the house a white kitten with a black spot on its forehead and one eye bluer than the other. He had found him nearby, soaked, half-dead from the cold, the Cobra said. He had wrapped him in a dirty towel. With a hair dryer that had belonged to Jacobo’s mother (they got it from a room full of junk next to the Cobra’s basement cubbyhole), the nanny dried the kitten. They gave it bread soaked in