Four by Four Read online

  PRAISE FOR SARA MESA

  “With short, propulsive chapters, Sara Mesa creates an unforgettable gothic landscape, centered on the mysterious and menacing Wybrany College, that twists in ways that unsettle and thrill. In Four by Four, Mesa’s sentences are clear as glass, but when you look through you will be terrified by what you see.”

  —Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel

  “The atmospheric unraveling of the mystery will keep you turning the page; the ending will leave you stunned—Mesa’s Four by Four is a tautly written literary thriller that juxtaposes the innocence of children with the fetish of control; a social parable that warns against the silence of oppression and isolation through its disquieting, sparse prose.”

  —Kelsey Westenberg, Seminary Co-op

  “Stylistically, Four by Four’s narrative structure is both dazzling and dizzying, as its perfect pacing only enhances the metastasizing dread and dis-ease…. Mesa exposes the thin veneer of venerability to be hiding something menacing and unforgivable—and Four by Four lays it bare for all the world to see.”

  —Jeremy Garber, Powell’s Books

  “Very few authors evoke a visceral reaction with prose in the way that Sara Mesa does. A master of tension building, Mesa constructs lurid phantasmagoric worlds that are equal parts mysterious and unnerving. Four by Four sounds an alarm on the dangers of power, privilege, and the self-delusions told in order to hide complicity. A work of high gothic art, Four by Four solidifies Mesa as one of the strongest female voices in contemporary Spanish literature.”

  —Cristina Rodriguez, Deep Vellum Books

  “Sara Mesa. Don’t forget that name. The finalist for the 30th Premio Herralde de Novela. Read it. Share it. Talk about it. Open the book and begin. You won’t be able to put it down.”

  —Uxue, Un libro al día

  “Sara Mesa has brought a new narrative voice to the scene that is in a position to bear important fruit for the genre of the Spanish novel in the twenty first century…. Four by Four is an account of the sinister relationships of power corrupted by fear and latent violence that feed this social parable of Kafkian roots.”

  —Ángel Basanta, El Mundo

  Copyright © Sara Mesa, 2012

  c/o Indent Literary Agency

  Originally published by Editorial Anagrama S.A. as Cuatro por cuatro, 2012

  Translation copyright © Katie Whittemore, 2020

  First edition, 2020

  All rights reserved

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Available.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-948830-14-0 / ISBN-10: 1-948830-14-0

  This project and its translation are both supported in part by awards from the National Endowment for the Arts

  This project is supported in part by an award from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature

  Printed on acid-free paper in the United States of America.

  Cover design by Alban Fischer

  Interior design by Anthony Blake

  Open Letter is the University of Rochester’s nonprofit, literary translation press:

  Dewey Hall 1-219, Box 278968, Rochester, NY 14627

  www.openletterbooks.org

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE NEVER MORE THAN TWO HUNDRED

  CELIA

  IGNACIO

  HÉCTOR’S ORIGINS

  THE FOUNDER

  THE EXAMINATION

  THE FIRST DAY

  TEENY

  THE ADVISOR

  THE ROOM

  VALEN, CRISTI & MARINA

  THE BOOTY

  THE NIGHT

  LUX

  THE TEACHER

  THE WIFE

  BEATINGS

  THE WOODS

  GERASIM

  THE ANNIVERSARY

  VOMIT

  ENCOUNTERS

  SUBMISSION

  A VISIT

  FRIENDSHIP

  DOUBTS

  THE FIELD TRIP

  AT NIGHT

  A CLASS

  SCORN

  AGREEMENTS

  THE SUB

  SUMMER

  BEHIND

  CHILDHOOD

  THEY MEET

  THE SEAT

  “NEVER MORE THAN TWO HUNDRED”

  PART TWO A SUBSTITUTE’S DIARY

  SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 12TH

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13TH

  TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 14TH

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16TH

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17TH

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18TH

  SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19TH

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20TH

  TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 21ST

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22ND

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 23RD

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24TH

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25TH

  SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 26TH

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 27TH

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29TH

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30TH

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2ND

  SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3RD

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 4TH

  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5TH

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8TH

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9TH

  SUNDAY, DECEMBER 10TH

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 11TH

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13TH

  THURSDAY, DECEMBER 14TH

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15TH

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 16TH

  SUNDAY, DECEMBER 17TH

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 18TH

  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 19TH

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20TH

  THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21ST

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22ND

  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 26TH

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 27TH

  THURSDAY, DECEMBER 28TH

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 30TH

  SUNDAY, DECEMBER 31ST

  TUESDAY, JANUARY 2ND

  SUNDAY, JANUARY 7TH

  MONDAY, JANUARY 8TH

  WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 10TH

  SUNDAY, JANUARY 14TH

  MONDAY, JANUARY 15TH

  TUESDAY, JANUARY 16TH

  WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 17TH

  FRIDAY, JANUARY 19TH

  SUNDAY, JANUARY 21ST

  MONDAY, JANUARY 22ND

  WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24TH

  THURSDAY, JANUARY 25TH

  MONDAY, FEBRUARY 19TH

  FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23RD

  REFERENCES

  PART ONE

  NEVER MORE THAN TWO HUNDRED

  CELIA

  The contour of the landscape curves, fades, and descends before dissolving in the distance. We are there, at the end, paused and panting under the motionless sky. It’s February and still cold. The air cuts off our breath, attacks Teeny’s lungs. She’s been sick for weeks.

  We’ve never made it this far. Our sneakers are soaked from walking in the muddy grass, avoiding the roads.

  We wait for Teeny to catch up and then reconvene.

  “Should we have breakfast now?” Valen asks.

  Her chubby cheeks tremble. Valen is always hungry. The rest of us protest. It’s not time to eat. We only stopped to decide where to go from here, from now. There’s no time to waste; we’ll eat later, while we walk. Or we won’t eat at all.

  We have two options: climb the hill until we reach the highway or follow the slope down and try to find the river. Though river is probably an exaggeration. Memory summons to mind a brown thread—a creek, at best—but not its exact location. None of us have been through here in years.

  “I say we head for the highway. Then we can hitchhike wherever somebody will take us.” Marina sounds braver than she acts. We’re not convinced.

  I speak up. “Hitchhike? Are you crazy? They’d bring us right back.”

  “The river’s
safer,” Cristi says.

  “But we don’t know where it is!” says Marina.

  Cristi shrugs. Valen tries again, reaching for her backpack. “We could eat while we decide.”

  “What do you think, Teeny?” I ask.

  She looks up. Squints. The lenses of her glasses are fogged over. She coughs again. She coughs and blinks endlessly. Her nose runs. She’s full of fluid, Teeny is. I don’t even wait for her to respond. I speak for her: “Teeny doesn’t care what we do as long as we do it quick. Sitting around in this cold is going to kill her.”

  “I think she should eat something,” Valen says.

  “Shut up, you greasy fatass,” Cristi says.

  They fight. First, with insults. Then they throw themselves on the wet ground and roll around, theatrically, half-heartedly. Marina goads them. It’s not clear whose side she’s on. Teeny and I wait. She thinks about nothing and I try to think about everything.

  It doesn’t matter. I see them coming in the 4x4, up the narrow, dusty path. They’re coming toward us and there we are, stopped, as stopped as time. I get a rush: anticipating a lecture from the Booty or punishment from the Headmaster makes me feel better.

  A quail chirps in the distance. Valen and Cristi get up, brush off their clothes, and look me in the eye. Neither one speaks, but I know they both blame me.

  IGNACIO

  Wybrany College, seven o’clock in the evening. Ten, twelve boys in gym clothes hang around to see what’s happening. Silence has filled the courtyard at the entrance to the school. Night is falling and Héctor enters escorted by his parents, the Head, and the Advisor. He walks past the boys, glancing up and looking at Ignacio. At him, only him. The look is unmistakable, direct.

  Ignacio trembles. The crunch of steps on the gravel lingers. He observes the back of Héctor, his head of full, blond hair, the smooth nape of his neck.

  Only when he’s roughly shaken does he realize that they’ve been grumbling in his ear the whole time, and he hasn’t heard a thing.

  “I’m talking to you, man, can’t you hear me?”

  Ignacio nods, craning slightly toward the door through which the New Kid has disappeared.

  The mother—the woman he assumes is the mother—is outside, closing her umbrella. She has slender calves and iridescent stockings beaded with drizzle. Lux watches her, too, his head cocked and back arched, ready to flee at the slightest movement.

  It’s November 1st. Ignacio’s birthday: twelve years old and finally the prospect of a friend to protect him.

  “I said, what do you think of him?” the other boy insists.

  “What do I know? I just saw him.”

  “But he looks queer, right?”

  “Yeah. Queer.”

  Ignacio senses the light is different, more yellow, or hazy. He can’t watch Héctor and listen at the same time, but they keep at him and their insistence becomes a command.

  “Why queer?” the other boy presses.

  “What do you mean, why? You’re the one who said it.”

  “Yeah, but why did you say it, too? What do you know about that?”

  A rueful smile breaks on Ignacio’s face. Caught again, he thinks, but who cares, he’ll finally have a friend to protect him. The New Kid is tall, he’s strong, and out of all the faces there in the courtyard, he chose to look at Ignacio’s.

  He hears the girls’ laughter from the other side of the wall, a restless laughter, musical. He longs for girls, but only as classmates.

  “Because he laughs like a girl.”

  “Oh, so you’ve heard him laugh?”

  “Yeah, before. When he got here.”

  “Really? Where?”

  He frees himself from the arm that grabs him.

  “I don’t know, before. Let go of me, I have to get to class.”

  “Class? Classes are over.”

  “Just let me go,” he begs.

  “Cripple, sissy, fucking fag,” the other boy says, releasing him.

  Ignacio hobbles away in his raised shoe with the lift. Laughter screeches at his back.

  Real or imagined, Ignacio hears it all the time.

  HÉCTOR’S ORIGINS

  But the New Kid’s origins go back to some time before, to weeks before, days before; not that time matters much in this place, where the days are so like one another. They accumulate, piling up, creating a sense of continuity, movement, or the evolution of something.

  It’s important to note, perhaps, that Héctor isn’t present on this occasion. Just his mother, or the woman who looks like the mother, and the father—him, for sure—in the Headmaster’s office. They are joined by the assistant headmistress of school, alias “the Booty.”

  The office doesn’t seem like an office. It’s more like a magnificent living room, with its crystal chandeliers and perfectly-worn Persian rugs—vulgar, if they’re too new—and gleaming floor-to-ceiling windows, the glass spotless and free of flies.

  Seated in leather armchairs around a low table, they speak for a long time with the particular stiffness to which they are accustomed.

  The Booty—a real beauty, in another time—discreetly keeps her distance. Only when necessary does she add an opportune fact, blinking before she speaks. In general, such facts relate to fees, services, and requirements, details of which the Headmaster is ignorant, given that he delegates this minutia to her.

  The tone of the conversation is sickly-sweet, good manners, slightly soured.

  The office smells like cologne. Which one? Impossible to say. A mix of various scents: those worn by the people now present, and by those who are absent. The people who sat where they are now, finalizing the details of their progeny’s matriculation.

  The scent of the elite, one could say if it weren’t an oversimplification, since that isn’t exactly the case. But one couldn’t claim the opposite is true, either.

  “You do realize we’re making an exception …”

  “We know, we know,” Héctor’s father says.

  He moves his hands to accentuate his words, like he did when he was a government minister. Unnecessary rhetorical emphasis.

  “It will be more expensive—due to the exception, you understand—still, you insist this is what you want?”

  “Yes, we insist. It’s absolutely critical.”

  “Though it won’t be easy for us, getting rid of the boy,” the woman adds.

  “Getting rid of isn’t quite the right expression,” the father says.

  His eyes flash. He looks at his wife and she goes quiet.

  The Booty smiles at them both. They shouldn’t feel uncomfortable, she says, language betrays us all. Parents undeniably feel a sense of relief when they enroll their children at the college; it happens to everyone. Bringing up a child is complicated, an act of responsibility demanding extreme dedication. There’s nothing wrong with leaving a piece of it in the hands of experts.

  “Héctor is a brilliant boy,” the woman continues, speaking cautiously now. “Very intelligent, headstrong, a bit mischievous, maybe. He always finds a way to make his uniform unique somehow: a patch, a hole, a button pinned somewhere. As you know, he needs to do things his way.”

  “Ah, but that’s good,” the Headmaster says. “That’s very good. It speaks of character, strength of character, manliness. We don’t go overboard on rules here. Strict on the fundamentals, flexible on incidentals. Our educational methods are liberal, they’re based in absolute freedom. Will you have some …” He turns to look at Lux, the cat, who has just slipped through the bars on the window, “… coffee?”

  They drink from little porcelain cups, served with biscuits they barely nibble. Then they settle the rest: the registration, monthly payments, additional installments. The visitors express their surprise that rooms are shared, but nod sensibly at the explanation.

  “At this age, boys on their own are hard to control,” says the Booty. “This way they keep an eye on each other. It’s not to their benefit to be alone in their free time.”

  “O
bviously, some boarding schools make private rooms a mainstay of their appeal,” the Headmaster continues, “precisely because they have nothing else to offer. Special menus, the latest technology, professional sports facilities, blah, blah, blah … They’re only focused on the superfluous aspects. We guarantee a sufficient level of material comfort. Not excellent, perhaps, but sufficient. But we also guarantee an extraordinarily high-quality education, which goes far beyond academics. We do not impose discipline: the children impose it on themselves. Rigorous, not rigid. Firm, not harsh. Personalities are sculpted, polished until they shine. The country’s best have passed through here. We know how to shape the best.”

  He carefully cleans his beard with a napkin and waits for a reaction. The couple smiles. They are notably, visibly relaxed.

  An agreement has been reached.

  THE FOUNDER

  Wybrany College—which we pronounce güíbrani colich—is set in a man-made meadow surrounded by forested terrain.

  On the highway from Cárdenas to the now defunct city of Vado, no sign exists indicating access to the property. Supposedly, this is in order to avoid any invasion of privacy by those who would pry, including journalists.

  The Wybrany College website neither provides an exact location, nor are there any photographs of its facilities. Only a brief contact form available for interested parents that, once submitted, apparently never receives a response.

  In any case, full occupancy at Wybrany College is not a concern. There is likely a long waitlist for any openings: this is one of the best schools in the country. Héctor is the only student we’ve seen arrive recently, except for the first years and the Specials. Adding a cohort of Specials was a later expansion of the school. In no way did this alter the spirit of the college’s founding.

  The history of Wybrany College is recited once a year. The assistant headmistress describes it during the mid-January anniversary celebration, in a formal speech prior to the dance.

  The way she tells it, the school was founded in 1943 by a Polish businessman forced into exile during the Second World War. He arrived in our country practically ruined, despite having been one of the wealthiest men in Europe just two years before.

  The assistant headmistress reads her speech before the silent auditorium: “Moved by the fate of exiled orphans who had lost their parents, Andrzej Wybrany directed his efforts at building a school where they could be educated and cared for with all the resources they would have enjoyed had the destinies of their families remained unaltered.”