Another book with a stream of consciousness about memories … I am sensing a theme here. 

As Auxilio hides in the university bathroom for 12 days, she reflects on different memories and experiences, transporting the reader to a different world than the reality of her sitting in the bathroom stall as the army invades the university. The line, “As if I had died and was viewing the years from an unaccustomed vantage point” (pg 32) reminded me of the Shrouded Woman and how she reflected on her life after she died. Obviously, our narrator is still alive, but as she faces uncertainty and is found by the soldiers, she is sent into survival mode. In the narrator’s case, survival mode is found in literature, the book by Pedro Garfías in particular.

The story begins by preparing us for a “horror story” (pg 1), even though “it won’t appear to be, for the simple reason that I am the teller (pg1). This line sets up the suspense in the book. I was prepared to read about something horrific, and while the descriptions of the soldiers coming to look for her while she was in the stalls were stressful, Auxilio lives up to her statement that this book won’t appear to be horrific. As the teller of the story, Auxilio downplays the horror, for example when she is discussing López Azcarate’s suicide, she describes the news of it as “exhilarating, as if reality were whispering in your ear: I can still do great things; I can still take you by surprise, you silly girl, you and everyone else; I can still move heaven and earth for love” (pg 19). I suppose as the “mother of Mexican poetry” (pg 1), this view is expected; finding the profound meanings behind dark realities seems poetic to me. 

Time appears to be an abstract concept in this book. It took me until the end of the novel to realize that she was in the bathroom the whole time. I was shocked when I read that it was “more than fifteen days” (pg 172). It seems to be a story about the past, present, and future all at the same time, and at most points I was not sure which one of these we were in. What is not abstract however is the context. This is a book about Latin America, Mexico City in particular, and the tense political climate, which the narrator specifically references throughout, disguised by Auxilio’s reflections. She describes the “Latin American nightmare: being unable to find your weapon” (pg 67), and how “now it is rare to hear singing, where once everything was a song” (pg 13). She emphasizes the critique of Latin American political unrest in the 1960s, poignantly paying tribute to the victims of the tragic Tlatelolco massacre in 1968. 

The narrator also makes reference to influential writers and figures on pages 159 – 161, making prophetic claims about them for a distant future, which I think emphasizes the immortalization of art and its influence. “Metempsychosis. Poetry shall not disappear” (pg 159). This line reflects the story’s message that literature and poetry are timeless, it exists in the past, present, and future, just in different forms.

My question for this week, is do you think the memories are real or hallucinations?