A Son of the Rock

faber and faber, 1993, 605 p. Translated from the Spanish Conversacion en la catedral by Gregory Rabassa.

This is a novel that is at the same time sprawling, covering a time in Peru when it was under the dictatorship of General Odría, yet also intimate, as it revolves round the families and interactions of two of its characters, Santiago Zavala, son of the well-off Don Fermín, and Ambrosio, once a chauffeur to Fermín but later to Cayo Bermúdez, a Minister of Government, Odría’s hardman.

When the novel starts Santiago is staring at the Avenida Tacna and wondering “At what precise moment had Peru fucked itself up?” While the novel does not provide a full account of the country’s dysfunctionality at that time it does go on to illustrate a lot of that fucked-upness. Much to the dislike of his father and mother, Santiago has been working at the newspaper La Crónica for many years. He meets a down on his luck Ambrosio working at the dog pound and they go on to have a conversation (the Cathedral of the book’s title is a bar) during which their life stories unfold.

Through it we meet examples of the highs, Don Fermín, Bermúdez, Santiago’s family, and some of the lows of Peruvian society. Bermúdez keeps a mistress, Hortensia, a former night-club singer with the stage name, the Muse, who spends his money liberally. She is friendly – more than friendly – with Queta, a (relatively) expensive prostitute at Señora Ivonne’s, with whom Ambrosio has a fascination.

Despite the dictatorship there are lingering political tensions between Odríists and Apristas – even more so between that latter group and the Communists (though at one point someone says there are only ten Communists left and they are all secret policemen.) Disturbances occur in the town of Arequipa, which lead to a softening of the regime and the fall of Bermúdez. Hortensia’s life more or less falls apart after his exile. Ambrosio is caught up in all this. Santiago’s job at La Crónica keeps him apart, though he had been arrested early on in his life as a hanger-on of an anti-Odría group known as Cahuide before resolving to stay out of trouble. “‘Capable people like you and me don’t get involved,’ Santiago said. ‘We’re content to criticise the incapable people who do.’”

Much of the text focuses on Ambrosio’s relationship with his wife Amalia, a smaller part relays how Santiago came to marry a nurse (again to his family’s discontent,) while the back-biting, manœuvring and backside-covering of the military during the Arequipa unrest are well-illustrated.

This is not a straightforward read, the narrative often alternates paragraphs from the present of the conversation with the unfolding of past events, which is initially a bit confusing though it settles down more from Part Two onwards, but it encompasses different layers of Peruvian society and illustrates the lack of agency of ordinary people caught up in events outwith their control, their struggles to get by, and contrasts them with the insouciance of the moneyed.

Note to the sensitive: the text contains the word ‘niggers’.