Ways of Going Home: A Novel (13 page)

Finally, I ended up near Eme’s house, and I stayed on the sidewalk, waiting for some sign. Suddenly I heard her voice. She was talking to her friends; they must have been smoking in the front yard. I was going to go over to them, but then I thought that it was enough for me to know she was safe. I felt her close by, a few steps away, but I decided to leave immediately. We’re all right, I thought, with a strange flicker of happiness.

I returned home at dawn. I was struck by the scene when I went inside. Some days earlier I had organized my books. Now they were a generous ruin on the floor. Same for the plates and two windows. The house had survived, though.

I thought about going immediately to Maipú, but just before nine in the morning I managed to reach my mother.

“We’re all right,” she said, and she asked me not to come see them, saying the trip out there was very dangerous. “Stay home and organize your books,” she said. “Don’t worry about us.”

*   *   *

But I’m going to go. Early tomorrow I’m going to see them, I’m going to be with them.

*   *   *

It’s late. I’m writing. The city is convalescing, but little by little the sounds of any other end-of-summer night are resuming. I think naively, intensely, about suffering. About the people who died today, in the south. About yesterday’s dead, and tomorrow’s. And about this profession, this strange, humble and arrogant, necessary and insufficient trade: to spend life watching, writing.

*   *   *

After the Peugeot 404 my father had a light blue 504 and then a silver 505. None of those models are out on the avenue tonight.

I watch the cars, I count the cars. It’s overwhelming to think that in the backseats children are sleeping, and that every one of those children will remember, someday, the old car they rode in years before, with their parents.

A Note About the Author

Alejandro Zambra is a poet, novelist, and literary critic who was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1975. He is the author of two previous novels,
The Private Lives of Trees
and
Bonsai
, which was awarded a Chilean Critics Award for best novel. He was selected as one of
Granta
’s Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists and was elected to the Bogotá39 list.

A Note About the Translator

Megan McDowell is a literary translator living in Zurich, Switzerland. She also translated Alejandro Zambra’s
The Private Lives of Trees
.

ALSO BY ALEJANDRO ZAMBRA

Bonsai

The Private Lives of Trees

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright © 2011 by Alejandro Zambra and Editorial Anagrama, S. A.

Translation copyright © 2013 by Megan McDowell

All rights reserved

Originally published in 2011 by Editorial Anagrama, Spain, as
Formas de volver a casa

Published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

First American edition, 2013

A portion of this book originally appeared, in slightly different form, in
Granta 113: Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Zambra, Alejandro, 1975–

   
[Formas de volver a casa. English]

   
Ways of going home / Alejandro Zambra; translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell. — 1st American ed.

        
p.   cm.

   
ISBN 978-0-374-28664-4 (alk. paper)

    
1.  Families—Chile—Fiction.   2.  Chilean literature—Translations into English.   I.  McDowell, Megan.   II.  Title.

      
PQ8098.36.A43 F6713 2013

863'.7—dc23

2012021270

Illustration on title page by Charlotte Strick

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The author and translator wish to thank Neil Davidson for his assistance with the translation.

eISBN 9781466828209