- •The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
- •It’s perfectly fine if you don’t believe in these ‘superstitions’. In fact, it’s better than fine — it’s perfect. Because no matter what you believe, fukú believes in you.
- •The moronic inferno
- •Oscar is brave
- •Oscar comes close
- •I’d kill him first.
- •Amor de pendejo
- •It was Ana. Standing in his foyer, wearing a full-length leather, her trigueña skin blood-charged from the cold, her face gorgeous with eyeliner, mascara, foundation, lipstick, and blush.
- •Oscar in love
- •I feel it, you say, too loudly. Lo siento.
- •I always hated obvious dreams like that. I still do.
- •La chica de mi escuela
- •It’s your fault! she swore, meant in more ways than one.
- •I don’t like him, Beli said. He looks at me.
- •Hunt the light knight
- •I love you! she wanted to scream, I want to have all your children! I want to be your woman! But instead she said, You be careful.
- •I’m allowed to do anything I want, Beli said stubbornly, with my husband.
- •El hollywood
- •The gangster we’re all looking for
- •I do not lie. How many rooms do you want?
- •I don’t need a job. He’s going to buy me a house.
- •It was La Inca who saw it first. Well, you finally did it. You’re pregnant. No I’m not, Beli rasped, wiping the fetid mash from her mouth. But she was.
- •Revelation
- •In the shadow of the jacaranda
- •I don’t know who in carajo—
- •Hesitation
- •La inca, the divine
- •Choice and consequences
- •Fukú vs. Zafa
- •I met something, Beli would say, guardedly.
- •Back among the living
- •La inca, in decline
- •I want to leave. I hate this place.
- •I wish I could say different but I’ve got it right here on tape. La Inca told you you had to leave the country and you laughed. End of story.
- •The last days of the republic
- •I’m thinking of going to Nueva York.
- •It was pretty horrible. As for punkboy, apparently dude jumped right out the window and ran all the way to George Street. Buttnaked.
- •I’d be sure to have ugly daughters.
- •I mean someone, Abelard said darkly.
- •Santo domingo confidential
- •The bad thing
- •I know, I know, Lydia, but what should I do? Jesú Cristo, Abelard, she said tremulously. What options are there. This is Trujillo you’re talking about.
- •Chiste apocalyptus
- •If the stories are to be believed, it all had to do with a joke.
- •The fall
- •Abelard in chains
- •It wasn’t long after that visit that Socorro realized that she was pregnant. With Abelard’s Third and Final Daughter.
- •The sentence
- •Fallout
- •The third and final daughter
- •The burning
- •I am your real family, La Inca said forcefully. I am here to save you.
- •Forget me naut
- •Sanctuary
- •Oscar takes a vacation
- •The condensed notebook of a return to a nativeland
- •It was also reported that Oscar drooled on himself and didn’t wake up for the meal or the movie, only when the plane touched down and everybody clapped.
- •La beba
- •I don’t need your help. And she ain’t a puta.
- •A note from your author
- •The girl from sabana iglesia
- •Oscar at the rubicon
- •I got one, he said. She’s the girlfriend of my mind.
- •Last chance
- •Oscar gets beat
- •Clives to the rescue
- •Close encounters of the caribbean kind
- •It wasn’t completely egregious, he said. I still had a few hit points left.
- •Part III
- •I might partake. Just a little, though. I would not want to cloud my faculties.
- •Curse of the caribbean
- •The last days of oscar wao
- •On a super final note
- •Veidt says: ‘I did the right thing, didn’t I? It all worked out in the end’. And Manhattan, before fading from our Universe, replies: ‘In the end? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends’.
- •The final letter
- •Acknowledgments
- •Table of Contents
The fall
He spent that night with Lydia. It had been a weird time for them. Not ten days earlier Lydia had announced that she was pregnant — I’m going to have your son, she crowed happily. But two days later the son proved to be a false alarm, probably just some indigestion. There was relief — like he needed anything else on his plate, and what if it had been another daughter? — but also disappointment, for Abelard wouldn’t have minded a little son, even if the carajito would have been the child of a mistress and born in his darkest hour. He knew that Lydia had been wanting something for some time now, something real that she could claim was theirs and theirs alone. She was forever telling him to leave his wife and move in with her, and while that might have been attractive indeed while they were together in Santiago, the possibility vanished as soon as he set foot back in his house and his two beautiful daughters rushed him. He was a predictable man and liked his predictable comforts, but Lydia never stopped trying to convince him, in a low-intensity way, that love was love and for that reason it should be obeyed. She pretended to be sanguine over the non-appearance of their son. Why would I want to ruin these breasts, she joked — but he could tell she was disheartened. He was too. For these last few days Abelard had been having vague, troubled dreams full of children crying at night, and his father’s first house. Left a disquieting stain on his waking hours. Without really thinking about it, he’d not seen Lydia since that night the news turned bad, had gone out drinking in part, I believe, because he feared that the boy’s non-birth might have broken them, but instead he felt for her the old desire, the one that nearly knocked him over the first time they’d met at his cousin Amilcar’s birthday, when they’d both been so slender and young and so jam-packed with possibilities.
For once they did not talk about Trujillo. Can you believe how long it’s been? he asked her in amazement during their last Saturday-night tryst. I can believe it, she said sadly, pulling at the flesh of her stomach. We’re clocks, Abelard. Nothing more. Abelard shook his head. We’re more than that. We’re marvels, mi amor.
I wish I could stay in this moment, wish I could extend Abelard’s happy days, but it’s impossible. The next week two atomic eyes opened over civilian centers in Japan and, even though no one knew it yet, the world was then remade. Not two days after the atomic bombs scarred Japan forever, Socorro dreamed that the faceless man was standing over her husband’s bed, and she could not scream, could not say anything, and then the next night she dreamed that he was standing over her children too. I’ve been dreaming, she told her husband, but he waved his hands, dismissing. She began to watch the road in front of their home and burn candles in her room. In Santiago, Abelard is kissing Lydia’s hands and she is sighing with pleasure and already we’re heading for Victory in the Pacific and for three Secret Police officers in their shiny Chevrolet winding up the road to Abelard’s house. Already it’s the Fall.