He confesses to the past that he has already spoken with his daughters about his death, about how he wants to be veiled and how he wants to be buried. The Peruvian writer Gustavo Rodríguez never had itches when it came to talking naturally about death, as one speaks of any other subject of life, as one speaks, for example, of the controversies left by the last Superclásico between River and Boca.
He is surprised, on the contrary, that death is such an elusive issue in everyday dialogue: "The real taboo is not sex, which we talk about all the time, but death," says the author of Cien cuyes, the novel winner of the 2023 Alfaguara Prize, which is presented this Wednesday at 19 p.m. in the Ernesto Sabato room of the Blue Pavilion of the Book Fair.
In Cien cuyes, about nine elderly people in a nursing home in Lima whom a caregiver helps to fulfill their last wishes, the loneliness of these adults and the right to a dignified death appear as fundamental edges of a fiction that, far from being a painful construction on old age, reveals a tragicomic and tender side of that stage. The guinea pig is the hamster-like rodent better known as guinea pig, often used for biological experimentation; and that in the Andean countries it is still consumed as food.
"Cien cuyes", by Gustavo Rodríguez (Alfaguara, $4,299 paper; $3,495 audiobook; $1,997 ebook).
How was the genesis of this novel?
There is always a selfish motivation, the source of every novel, and in this case it has to do with one's own perception that when one turns 50 or more one becomes aware that there is less and less life left. Along the way you watch your parents languish, your mentors fall apart, several of them die. You start asking yourself questions.
I think that was the start of everything. I was populated by elderly characters, those that I put in stories or in story projects that were floating around me. Then the pandemic came on and we know how cruel it was especially to our seniors.
And suddenly, the death of my own father-in-law, who was a very dignified old man, very discreet and who had a very dignified death at the height of how he led his life. That was the final trigger that made me sit down to write this novel. I dedicate the book to his memory.
–Death with dignity is the great theme that runs throughout the novel. "I'm dying and I want to leave with dignity," says one character. Is there an unworthy death?
-Death always interested me literarily, as a naturalization of the subject, because I do not know if it happens in Argentina, but in my country there is a lot of talk about death, but as a spectacle, as sensationalism, as hired killers, but the natural death that surrounds us since we are born is not talked about much.
But it wasn't until I saw my father-in-law in his final months and the dignity with which he passed away. I said to myself, well, we all deserve such a death. And that's what led me to add that aspect to it. The issue of the naturalization of death.
That is precisely what a character suggests: that we should talk about death as naturally as about births. And yet, is it a taboo?
I have said once that we tend to think that sex is the taboo of our time and it is not, the true taboo of our time is death. We talk about sex much more than death and it seems to me that this carries a very strong additional burden for those of us who survived someone's death.
Because not naturalizing death will mean that later we have much crueler duels than we usually have. I have spoken with a couple of thanatologists and they find in their treatments many people who were not allowed to say goodbye as a child to a certain beloved figure or who carry a lot of guilt in drag.
So it seems healthy to me that we talk about death, that we talk about old age as well, which is another issue that we seem to deny. Even from our phone applications we deny that we are aging. It seems to me that literature must raise uncomfortable topics so that conversations and debates can begin.
The guinea pig, from pet to culinary delight of the Peruvian Andes. Guinea pigs in disguise, at the Cuy Festival.
Why is old age not so much contemplated in our cultural consumption?
I think that old age is contemplated in our sphere as a stereotype: the grandfather of the Simpsons who nobody understands, who forgets things. And in reality the issue is much more nuanced.
The other day I was in Chile and I heard that there is a whole debate about lithium deposits and I thought we were talking about those real, tangible deposits, but we are passing by a huge deposit of knowledge, of experiences, which we ignore out of prejudice, which is this interconnected network of experiences that are our elders. People who have already lived through revolutions, had passions, attended inventions, who knew how to adapt at the time to great changes and of whom we pass by thinking that they do not know what they are talking about.
It seems to me that we are not stopping long enough to listen and to make the best. Bearing in mind, in addition, that we are going to be that grandfather if we have the fortune or bad luck to live until then.
More taboo is, in this sense, the word suicide, something that cannot even be mentioned.
Yes, it is considered a bad word, to the point that the novel does not talk about suicide either, but it does show you situations that have to do with that idea.
-Speak of dignified death, assisted death.
It has to do with a very liberal conviction of mine regarding personal decisions. In other words, I believe a lot in individual freedom and I do not believe much in the interference of guilt with respect to decisions. I believe that guilt is a terrible counselor in life and the fact that because of guilt we have to make a human being suffer extremely who no longer wants to be in this life, seems to me to border on sadism, a well-intentioned sadism, but sadism in the end.
I say it half jokingly, half seriously, but if we are at a party with a group of friends and you want to leave because you are not having a good time, we do not tie you to the party, it is the worst thing we could do with it. So why are we doing this with so many people who want to leave because they can't stand life anymore?
Why not let him decide about his life?
We live in unequal countries where your fate is tied to the lottery from which you were born. We were born in homes that gave us some economic freedom and certain access, but the vast majority did not.
So if you can't decide under what circumstances to be born, at least let us have the comfort of deciding under what circumstances to die. It seems to me to be entirely logical and, in any case, relevant to the debate.
Gustavo Rodríguez: "Care has a woman's face in the world." Photo Luciano Thieberger
How do the guinea pigs that give the novel its title appear?
For the reader to understand why it is called that, it would have to understand the argument that Euphrasia is a caregiver for the elderly who suddenly becomes the executor of the last wishes of the old men. They are a metaphor for the consideration for that service.
I usually title my novels at the end, but in the case of One Hundred Guinea Pigs it happened halfway. I titled it that way in the hope that readers who cannot understand it will do the same exercise of interpretation and contextualization that we Latin Americans usually do with respect to other foreign terms that come to us through literature.
And I thought it was nice that when Claudia Piñeiro announced it on the day of the Alfaguara Prize ceremony, she said it much better than I did, that is, that she turned it in some tangential way, into a vindication of a cultural expression.
Euphrasia, the caregiver, comes from a needy social class, in addition to being a woman.
At the macro level, in fact, care has a woman's face in the world. In Europe I realized that societies with the most affluent strata entrust care to migrant women, that is, in the case of Latin America, they are Andean women who arrive in the city; in the case of Spain, they are Latin American women who arrive in Spain.
But there is always an issue of migration, of people looking to these women through care, to improve their quality of life. But there is the paradox that by taking care of people who pay them, they neglect their own family.
I didn't realize that while writing the novel, until a dialogue that Euphrasia has about how in our societies well-off people can go to their prevention plan, but poorer people have to go to their children. So it is very perverse. How our inequality sneaks into the most domestic interstices as well.
Speaking of death, have you thought about his funeral?
One of the things I'm proud of is how I've approached the death of Miss Daughters, since they were teenagers. In the wake of my dad's death, about 16 years ago, I realized that we had never talked about death in my family, I always shunned it so as not to invoke it.
I decided that with my daughters it was not going to be like that, that from the joke, from the black humor, from certain family codes we were going to make that transparent. So if you know how I want to be veiled, how I want to be buried, you know everything. I know that when I die, they will be sad, they will cry, but they will not carry extra things because of having silenced things.
Oswaldo Reynoso (1931-2016) motivated him to publish.
-He comes from a training as a publicist and had the accolade as a writer of Oswaldo Reynoso. How was it?
-Actually I am an autodidact who always wrote since childhood. At one point I stumbled upon advertising as a means to make money while tapping into my ability to create stories.
In fact, I came here to Buenos Aires several times for awards, advertising festivals and to film commercials. And I am actually an autodidact who was lucky enough at the time to publish and thanks to the fact that Oswaldo Reynoso, who is a totemic writer in my country, saw my first manuscript and told me: "Publish". In fact, he presented my first book of short stories in Lima more than 20 years ago.
"How did you come across it?"
-It was fortunate that when I had my first collection of a compendium of written stories, I showed it to a friend who had studied advertising with me and who had a cultural magazine, he read them, he praised them a lot, but I did not believe him and then he told me 'maybe you can believe Oswaldo Reynoso'.
And he took me to his house. I was so very lucky. From then on I didn't stop writing. That is, I went back to being that teenager who wrote without the pretense of publishing, but as a result of Oswaldo's support I got the bug that maybe I should publish and I did not stop.
The prize came in January at a turbulent time in Peru, a president who wanted to dissolve Congress, was dismissed and imprisoned, a new president, marches and claims, dead in the streets. How are these days lived?
"Now there is an apparent calm. Although they are already announcing that there will be marches again in a few months. It seems to me a certain sector of my population, a certain conservative or authoritarian sector, is that in no country can it happen that there are more than 60 deaths and that no one has resigned, nor that there is someone sanctioned for that.
In other words, that cannot happen. And of course, it happens because they are citizens of the periphery, who are usually always the most relegated from the front pages. That cannot be as long as there is no social sanction against them or a mea culpa. I think this is going to continue to have some eruptions from time to time.
What is the situation with President Dina Boluarte?
The president is at a crossroads because she is trying to wash her hands, putting the responsibility on the Armed Forces and police, but also trying to ingratiate herself with them. So he is in a somewhat precarious position.
Had they been excited and then disillusioned with Pedro Castillo?
A good part of the historically neglected population had been excited by the story of a professor in the field who was like them, who could remember them. But what happens at the moment is that there are three former Peruvian presidents in the same prison, special for them, like a hotel for them, a prison tailored to them.
And all three at the time came into the presidency with the story of being the saviors of the nation with a fairy tale behind a castle. It's the same thing. Fujimori was the same, (Alejandro) Toledo was the same. So, the main lesson is that we don't have to believe in caudillos, we have to believe in the fabric of our institutions, from our most everyday cells to the largest ones.
But Latin America is very caudillista.
"Yes, but it doesn't work. You have to lean on the institutions and not believe that a hero is going to arrive. I don't know if Christianity has anything to do with that belief of the savior who is going to come and wash us of all our rottenness, but it doesn't.
Alejandro Toledo, former president of Peru in April of this year, before the Court of his country. Photo Reuters
He mentioned Toledo, president of Peru between 2001 and 2006 and with corruption cases. You were his image consultant during his campaign.
I campaigned against Fujimori against Toledo. It was a very curious experience that I do not regret. I don't regret anything I've done in my past. But obviously I was disappointed. It did not live up to what was expected of him.
In the same way that Castillo did not live up to what was expected. He had in his time, a mediocre ruler who let others rule for him, but did not live up to the great symbol he represented. And then, when you find out how he was a vulgar thief, then your face falls to the floor and you decide I don't want to work with candidates again.
Rodriguez Basic
- Born in Lima in 1968. He has published the novels La furia de Aquiles (2001), La risa de tu madre (2003), La semana tiene siete mujeres (2010), Cocinero en su tinta (2012), República de La Papaya (2016), Te escribir mañana (2016), Madrugada (Alfaguara, 2018) and Treinta kilometers a la medianoche (2022), and the volume of short stories Trece mentiras cortas (2006).
- He is also the author of children's and youth books that are read in schools, and Machista con hijas (2021), based on his podcast of the same name, which has had a marked success in Latin America.
Traducciones Peruanas (2008) brings together several of his articles published in El Comercio. His book Cien cuyes won the 2023 Alfaguara Novel Prize.
PC
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