The spirit of gossip presides over Carmen Boullosa’s Texas: The Great Theft. Opening the book to its first page, we find “A Busybody’s Brief Note.” “Let’s state it up front, so we don’t get muddled: this is the year 1859,” it begins. “We’re on the northern and southern banks of the Río Bravo, known to some as the Rio Grande, in the cities of Bruneville and Matasánchez. Heading into the wind on horseback we could make it to the sea in half a morning.” It is a relief in a strange new novel to know where we are and when. But do we?
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If we read these sentences again, we begin to see how the matter-of-fact precision of the first—“this is the year 1859”—is, in fact, muddled by the second. How are we on both the northern and southern banks of the Río Bravo (or is it the Rio Grande?), in the cities of Bruneville and Matasánchez at the same time? Before we can figure out how to be in two places at once, we are swept away by the third sentence, galloped from the city to the sea; its cold blue air rises to greet us at the end of a journey we barely register making. Already, we are bewildered—well before the busybody tells us about the thefts and betrayals of the Americans, the gringos who carved the state of Texas out of Mexico’s northern frontier and established the city of Bruneville to protect their invented border.
The novel’s meanderings remind us that, as with all good gossip, what happened is beside the point.
This busybody sounds suspiciously like our novel’s narrator. Theirs is the voice of gossip: plainspoken, vigorous, and combative, a voice that babbles along as a single “we,” but in varied tones and tongues. Like a thief, gossip moves swiftly, undeterred by rivers or valleys, indifferent to borders and the hotheads who patrol them. It makes it possible for us to be on both the northern and southern banks of the Río Bravo, in Bruneville and in Matasánchez at the same time. Or rather, it floats us just above the cities, high enough for us to chuckle at their inhabitants, but not so high that we mistake ourselves for gods.
We observe the events that launch our story with equal parts excitement and agitation. At high noon, Don Nepomuceno, the Robin Hood of the Rio Grande, tries to get the Sheriff to stop beating Lázaro, an old vaquero who is drunk in the plaza. “Shut up, you dirty greaser,” the Sheriff spits at Nepomuceno. The men freeze in a face off—one second passes, then two, then three, then ten, then thirty—until their hands reach for their guns. Two shots are fired. The victim falls to the ground, bleeding. The victor flees, to plot his next move. All this transpires in less than a minute. But it takes the first part of the novel, almost two hundred pages, for the narrator to tell it. The drama is repeatedly interrupted by the story of how the insult—“Shut up, you dirty greaser”—travels across the plains, along the coastline, and up and down the mighty, moody rivers that separate the U.S. from Mexico.
The novel’s meanderings remind us that, as with all good gossip, what happened is beside the point. What matters is how it is told. In the beginning, it is easy to track. The insult wings its way across Market Square, carried by Frank, “one of the many Mexicans in the streets of Bruneville who run errands and spread gossip, a ‘run-speak-go-tell,’ a pelado,” a bum. Frank tells the butcher. The butcher tells the chicken dealer. The chicken dealer tells the greengrocer—and from here, the novel begins to tug us in several different directions, to whirl us round and round, until we collapse on both banks of the river, dizzied, confused, and at the same time filled with a delirious rapture.
Gossip flies us from Galveston to the swamps south of Matasánchez. As it spreads, it shifts shape. The Sheriff ’s insult is exaggerated, embellished; written down; turned into song; translated. It kicks up more gossip, older gossip. Someone tells a tale about the return of a vengeful white Indian, John Tanner (“this gets folks’ attention more than the news about Nepomuceno”). Someone whispers about the minister (“Wicked tongues say he does more than speak with boys, though it’s just gossip”). Someone claims to have seen a man carrying a Talking Cross. It has been dunked in holy water and has curative powers (“which we know is not true”). When gossip alights on new characters, it is sucked into their strange and eventful histories. But it knows when to retreat. “We don’t have time for them now,” the narrator dismisses the novel’s too-minor characters. It cannot risk losing the thread of our story.
A new world spins into our line of vision, its movement guided by gossip’s great centrifugal force. The temptation is to slow it all down—like Luis, the little boy in the marketplace whose mind “loses all concept of time” and stretches a single second into an hour. One could track the characters, noting their first names, last names, old names, new names, titles, epithets, and movements.
We have Sheriff Shears, Don Nepomuceno, Frank (formerly known as Pancho Lopez), Stealman (the lawyer), Sharp (the butcher), the greengrocer, Señora Luz, Mrs. Lazy, Doña Estefanía, Alitas, Frenchie, Cherem, Miss Lace, Judge Gold (who is not a real judge), Luis, Sabas, Refugio, Judge White (who is a real judge), Nat, Glevack, Mrs. Big, Olga, Minister Fear, Eleonor, Moonbeam, Lázaro, the Smiths, Caroline, Strong Water, Blue Falls, Chief Little Rib, Smiley, Roberto Cruz, Sitú, Perla, Óscar, Tim Black, Joe Lieder, Don Jacinto, Peter Hat (whom the Mexicans call “El Sombrerito”), La Plange, Snotty, Bill, Michaela, Ranger Neals, Ranger Phil, Ranger Ralph, Ranger Bob, Urrutia, Werbenski, Lupis Martínez, Aunt Lina, Santiago, Hector, Melón, Dolores, Dimas, Tadeo, Mateo, Mr. Wheel (the cart driver), Zachary Taylor, Lucrecia, Perdido, the Flamenca sisters, Clara, Jim Smiley, Leno, Tiburcio, Captain William Boyle, Rick, Chris, Doctor Schulz, Engineer Schleiche, Prince Solms, the Prince of Nassau, Mrs. Fear, Esther, Kenedy, King, Don Jacinto, Father Rigoberto, the Archbishop of Durango, Jeremiah Galván, the Robin brothers, the Trece brothers, Nicolaso Rodríguez, Aunt Cuca, Catalino, Lucha, Amalia, Doctor Velafuente, Doctor Velafuente’s patient, Aunt Cuca’s godmother, Isa, Rafaela, Jones, Felipillo Holandés, the Carranzas, Laura, Don Marcelino, Petronila, Roberto, Pepe, Domingo, Lolita, Gómez, the jailkeeper of Matasánchez (no one remembers his name), Green Horn, Captain Randolph B. Marcy, Pepementia, Gutiérrez, Carvajal, Don José María, Francisco Manuel Sánchez de Tagle, Wild Horse, Juan Caballo, Lucie, Lucie’s son, Gabriel Ronsard, the overseer of the Pulla cotton plantation, El Tigre, Noah Smithwick, the Born-to-Run Indians, Bruno, Pizca, Pierced Pearl, Bob Chess, Rawhide, Chief Smells Good, Sky Bullet, Peladita, Steve, Nemesio, Charlie, a guy called David, old Arnoldo, Teresa, Miffiin, Mr. Chaste (the mayor), Mr. Seed (the owner of the coffee shop), Alicia, Dry Whitman (a teetotaler), Sandy, Sandy’s cousin, Esteban, Fernando, Connecticut, the Scot, Carlos the Cuban, Dimitri, Wild, Trust, One, Two, Three, Patrick, Toothless, the woman who sells fresh tortillas, Skewbald, Mrs. Stealman (Elizabeth Vert), James, Rebecca, Silda, El Iluminado, Maria Elena Carranza, Rafael, Jose, Alberto, Polca, Milco, Lucoija, Lucia, Chief Buffalo Hump, Juan Prensa, Mr. Ellis Producer, Father Vera, Fidencio, Loncha, the delirious man, Dr. Meal, Magdalena (whom Nepomuceno’s men call La Desconocida), Magdalena’s aunt, Magdalena’s godmother, Blas, Josefina, Mr. Blast, William Walker, a crazy man (“El Loco”), Tulio, Bartolo, Doña Eduviges, Juan Pérez, Lupita, Sam Houston, Ludovico, Fulgencio, Silvestre, Pedro, Pablo, Ismael, Patronio, Fausto, El Güero, Frau Lieder, Herr Lieder, Lopez de Agauda, Julito, Úrsulo, Chung Sun, Mayor de la Cerva y Tana, Mr. Sand, Roho (or Rojo), the Lieutenant Governor, Captain Callaghan, McBride, Pridgen, the Senator, Catherine Anne Henry, George (Jorge) Henry, George’s son, Sarah Henry, Lieutenant Ware, Georgette, Georgette’s husband, Georgette’s son, Georgette’s oldest daughter (Sarah Ferguson), José Eusebio, José Esteban, the organ-grinder, José Hernández, Frederick Cannon, Josefa Segovia, Josefa’s nephew, Judge Jones (“Busy Bucks”), Shine, Señor Balli, Platita Poblana, Blade (the barber), Josh Wayne, Mr. Dice, Pepe, Gold, Pierce, Richie, Neil Emory, Gwendolyn Gwinn, Franklin Evans, Juliberto, Juliberto’s father, General Cumin, his wife, Captain Rogers, Urzus, Papa Bouverie, Tonkawa Fragrance, Owl Woman, Eliza, Rita, Mr. Domingo, Doña Tere, Dan Print, Metal Belly, Captain Ruby, Marisa, Saint Agatha, Saint Lucia, Our Lady of the Holy Conception, Saint Margaret, and Saint Cecilia.
It is a stupefying list, if not an especially useful one. This is not because it is incomplete (though it very well may be), but because it cannot account for the numberless numbers of cowboys, Indians, immigrants, and slaves that fill out the novel. Gossip takes comfort in crowds. It has little use for singular men and women, those finely individuated, emotionally complex characters whose minds and memories preoccupy the writers of realist and modernist novels alike. Interiority demands patience; it takes time to plumb the depths of consciousness.
But gossip’s impatience, its garrulous sociability, leaves it mostly indifferent to the characters’ thoughts and feelings. The glimpses we are given of them—in, for instance, the diary of Mrs. Stealman, the lawyer’s wife—reveal only the most generic expressions of bigotry and fear. “Mrs. Stealman writes in peacock blue ink, as befits her personality and class,” the narrator observes. What she writes about the Sheriff and Nepomuceno is almost too unoriginal to repeat: “Good for the sheriff. He’s got to start somewhere cleaning up this place…The drunken greaser resisted. Another Mexican came to his defense.” Even in her diary, she does little more than gossip with herself. In quoting her, we do little more than keep the gossip moving.
The raucous voice of gossip does not issue from one busybody, but from a chorus of girlish creatures…conjuring up a fantastical language to tell the story of un-epic deeds.
Gossip’s trick is to make all its characters, no matter their race or nationality, equally peripheral and essentially interchangeable. At the party that Mrs. Stealman throws that night, the guests have an impassioned debate about a scandalous novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. “Negroes can’t be characters in novels. That would be like having a dog as a protagonist!” one guest exclaims. “You mean they’re like a piece of furniture, a wardrobe, or a chair?” another asks. Where a protagonist should be in Texas, there is only an empty space, with hundreds of chair-like characters arranged in concentric circles around it. When the narrator makes an exception, it is not for people, but for animals, like the cow that floats down the river, dreaming of grass:
I, the rotting cow, endowed with the life of these worms, dream that I am about to eat a mouthful of fresh grass. In the grass, a caterpillar watches me. It’s not like any of the worms in my belly. In the caterpillar’s eye, I see the moon shining at noon.
In this day that I share with the moon, reflected in the caterpillar’s eye, I see myself, a cow that’s very much a cow: a ruminating, sweet, edible cow that gives the milk that makes sweets and cakes.
Doesn’t feel good to be breeding worms…
I’m a cow, not a coffin!
I wasn’t born to become a swollen, drifting balloon.
Perhaps I should calm myself: I’m the cow who used to moo. The cow who dreams, inspired by my worms’ souls.
I forget about the earthworm and her eye; I take a bite of the (delicious) fresh grass which might not be real, but no matter.
The cow’s body drifts into the novel on a strange snatch of poetry. Here is one of the few instances in the novel when gossip’s first-person plural yields to the first-person singular, “I, the rotting cow,” whose lyric address seems like a freakish parody of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, a poem regularly praised for its speaker’s receptivity to all forms of life. Yet the poet’s imagination did not extend to Mexicans. “What has miserable, inefficient Mexico to do with the great mission of peopling the New World with a noble race?” he wrote in the Brooklyn Eagle. Where Whitman’s democratic spirit failed, our narrator steps in to teach his admiring readers a lesson. The worm-ridden cow has a wonderous double consciousness, far superior to that of the novel’s human characters. It can see itself, reflected in the caterpillar’s eye, as “a cow that’s very much a cow,” and it can see itself as the humans see it, as “a ruminating, sweet, edible cow that gives the milk that makes sweets and cakes.” Its corpse reminds us that, while the Americans are guilty of theft, this does not mean that the Mexicans are innocent.
As Nepomuceno’s sidekick, Óscar, worries, “no matter how you look at it, we’re guilty of the same kind of hubris as the gringos; although we don’t have slaves, we call ourselves owners of horses, and of land and water too.” The terrible trap of conquest is that it forces men on both sides to lay claim to what is not theirs—the land, the river, the sky, and all the creatures that inhabit the earth, indifferent to man’s ownership of it. Only gossip can free itself from this trap, because it is not mortal, and it is not bound by the rules of time and space, property and ownership.
Gossip which has survived its day is epic. Who, or what, is Homer but the name that modern readers have given to an ancient line of gossips? Across Texas, we find references to the great works of epic literature. Laguna del Diablo, from which Nepomuceno plots his attack on Bruneville, surrounded by his vaqueros and his lover, La Desconocida, recalls the burning lake that Satan is chained to in Milton’s Paradise Lost. The itemized list of rowboats and skiffs is modeled on the catalogue of ships in Homer’s Iliad. On the Amazons’ ranch, there sits “a pale-faced blonde, Peladita, who sews like a madwoman, all night and all day, waiting for her Ulises to return (an ill-tempered Mexican who, needless to say, has no intention of coming back for her).” Epic is the genre of imperial conquest, but gossip plunders from epic to spin a comic novel, a novel of the collective.
The world of Texas belongs in spirit, if not by law, to the slave, the drunk, the beggar, the whore, and all the other renegades and misfits who have pledged their allegiance to Nepomuceno’s army. Theirs is not an epic age. Peladita may sew until her fingers bleed, but her Ulises will never return. Nepomuceno’s attack on Bruneville will fail. No conquering army will be vanquished. No city will be founded on a hill. La Desconocida will flee to the U.S. with an American journalist named Dan Print, who has come to Mexico to find his big break. “Aw, chirriones, I thought crossing the border would be like crossing the Lethe,” he writes in his diary, disappointed. When he submits his article on Nepomuceno to his editor, Nepomuceno “morphs from a hero into a petty thief.” Is his demotion a racist lie? Or does it tell a profound truth about the impossibility of heroism in a world of landlust and bloodthirst—the world that gave rise first to the epic, then the novel?
Dan Print will transmit the story of Nepomuceno through writing. “Write? That seems awful girly to me,” one character tells another, who replies, “Writing is manly, if you tell the story right.” Dan Print writes in a manly style, simple and hard nosed and deliberately unmusical. But Boullosa refuses to end her writing with his byline. In a coda, five female saints play on bells, cymbals, tambourines, and a violin while they lament not Nepomuceno’s fate, but La Desconocida’s marriage to an American. “What a waste, they must have thought, she had the makings of a queen and she chose to be a commoner.” Their song reminds us that the raucous voice of gossip does not issue from one busybody, but from a chorus of girlish creatures, chattering, laughing, crying, praying, and conjuring up a fantastical language to tell the story of un-epic deeds. It spreads over a land that belongs to no man, hero, or thief.
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From Texas: The Great Theft by Carmen Boullosa, translated by Samantha Schnee. Copyright © 2024. Introduction copyright © 2024 by Merve Emre. Available from Deep Vellum.
