This latest novel by Julia Alvarez from the Dominican Republic reads like an autobiographic work. I have read six of her novels which bring out vividly the vibrant culture of her homeland and juxtapose it with her immigrant life in the US. The tragedies suffered by Dominicans, including her own family, during the terrible dictatorship of Trujillo are portrayed poignantly in all her novels.
In this latest novel, Alma, the protagonist is a successful Dominican writer in the US. Towards the end of her life, she gives up writing and goes back to her homeland. She takes all her manuscripts and her heavy heart is filled with untold stories, stories, so many stories. Alma has nowhere to put them except on the ground. So she decides to build a cemetery to bury her manuscripts with the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her. Alma wants her characters to rest in peace. The stories of Alma’s father (Papi) and Bienvenida, the first wife of the dictator Trujillo stand out among the untold stories and insist on coming out. Alma recollects them through the course of the novel.
Alma buys a piece of land in a slum area next to a garbage dump. She builds a small house, a large graveyard and a high compound wall. The cemetery has several parts for different kinds of stories. Sometimes the characters in the stories come out and roam the cemetery ground making sounds in the night.
Some of the boxes containing manuscripts "catch fire, crackling and sending up sparks, as if the flames are hungry for stories, even unfinished ones. The stories are released, their characters drifting off to the sea, to the mountains, into the dreams of the old and the unborn, seeping into the soil. A lucky few find their way into books by other writers. Sometimes the fragments are blown back, liberated from their plots".
The puzzled and curious slum dwellers want to know what is happening inside the property. A sign goes up on the wall at the main gate. El cementerio de los cuentos nunca contados (A cemetery for untold stories). The only way to enter is to speak into a small black box at the front gate. Cuéntame, a woman’s soft voice requests. Tell me a story. The door opens only if the story is good.
The first to gain entry is Filomena, a poor spinster and ex-maid. "She has no living relatives, no former husband or lover who left her for another woman, no kids gone to el Norte for opportunities. It happens with women: they close down before they ever open up. Some flowers never bloom. Or bloom too soon or late in life".
Filomena pours out her story finishing with the incantation "Colorín colorado, este cuento se ha acabado". a Spanish phrase used to indicate that a story has reached its end. The first part is just a colourful expression with no specific meaning, the second part means 'this story is over.' This is similar to the Tamil way of saying "கதை முடிந்தது கத்திரிக்காய் காச்சத்து." It means, literally, 'the story is over, the eggplant is ripe'.
Es verdad, ( this is true) Filomena adds, since it is her real-life story.
Alma employs Filomena as a caretaker to bury the manuscripts and look after the cemetery. She also makes her listen to the stories of those who want to enter as well as the sounds of wailing from the buried characters.
The graveyard attracts drifters, beggars, street orphans and drug traffickers. "Each group has its preferred territory: the smaller boys congregate around the markers for the children’s books, folktales and legends; the older ones gravitate to the burned drafts about lusty revolutionaries never liberated into story form; beggars take the ashy crumbs of whatever is left, lines of poems, rejected essays. There are open stretches with no markers where drug traffickers have sown marijuana seeds".
The haunting of dead characters is no deterrent to lovers from the slum who jump over the wall to have sex over the cool stone beds. "After satisfying their hunger, they tell stories. Boys and several girls protectively disguised as boys recount what happened that day, what was filched, who was kind, where they roamed, exact locations left vague to protect territory, and curb competition. Old-timers tell of hurricanes, massacres, and dictators, as well as of golden times. The young men boast about their exploits, girls they spied on, bathing behind plastic, see-through shower curtains, throwing buckets of water over their beautiful soapy bodies. The laughter dies down. The younger boys yawn. The night wears on. The groups disperse to their posts, sometimes searching out new locations, as some markers have been known to stir up nightmares. Others incite wonderful dreams. There are stories of transgressors waking up with a tail between their legs or horns on their heads.
Julia Alvarez ends the novel saying, "Eventually, storied and unstoried join in mystery. Nothing holds anyone together but imagination".