The Crossing: Border Trilogy (2): Vol 2 (Vintage International)

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It is in the early 1940’s when Billy Pelham sets out on his first of three trips from his home to Mexico. He is sixteen and his first trip is to reunite a female wolf about to pup with others of her kind in the mountains where she came from. Billy’s furthest trek south was to the town of Cuauhtemoc, which was verified as once being called San Antonio. San Antonio is plotted on the 1922 map. Billy’s path to Cuauhtemoc and subsequently to La Nortena, however, are speculative.

Bill Parham tiene dieciséis años y sale de casa para atrapar una loba que ha estado acechando los rebaños de su familia. La captura pero en lugar de matarla decide cruzar la frontera y llevarla de vuelta a la tierra de donde procede, a las montañas de México. Ésta será la primera vez que Bill cruzará la frontera y es en este viaje, donde aprenderá que el mundo en el que vive no tiene un orden marcado o quizá sí, el orden marcado por la violencia y la muerte. La odisea iniciática de Bill en compañía de la loba, que ocupa el primer tercio de la novela, se convierte en una travesía casi suspendida en el limbo, fuera del tiempo, donde el paisaje y la violencia más salvaje confluyen continuamente una con otra, la naturaleza en todo su esplendor enfrentada a la violencia que marca el hombre cuando aparece. Incluso se podría decir que este primer tercio de la novela donde se relata la conexión entre Bill y la loba, podrían funcionar como un relato independiente, una experiencia que marcará a Bill y que le enseñará que el mundo es oscuro e impenetrable allí donde el hombre campa a sus anchas. Fate exists, but it is also possible to shape it. We are not left without some control. In this there is implied a smidgen of hope. On Billy Parham’s second journey into Mexico, where he spends most of his time between the northern town of Casas Grandes and the southern town of Santa Ana de Babícora, these two relatively large towns have remained constant and verifiable between 1922 and the present. The smaller villages (or pueblos) had to be hunted down on Google Maps by "flying" close to the ground along the indicated route. Through this means, the pueblos of Mata Ortiz, San Jose (judged to be the existing pueblo of San Jose de Ermita), and La Pinta were located. The process involved using base maps of Sonora and Chihuahua, Mexico from 1922 as well as a Texaco Road Map of Arizona and New Mexico from 1935. The road map was surprisingly inclusive of geological features. These maps, especially the Mexican maps, were supplemented with detailed searches of Google Maps for villages of the mentioned names. I was surprised to see that the Mexican Maps mentioned places such as El Tigre in Sonora, Mexico and San Diego in Chihuahua, Mexico.Of the priest what can be said? As with all priests his mind had become clouded by the illusion of its proximity to God. I spent a good amount of time in early 2014 in southern Mexico. It was a learning experience and it helped me to appreciate what's in this novel. Not only was I able to follow along with much of the Spanish dialogue (it's basic stuff, trust me, I'm not bragging here), but the portrayal of the life and the people rings true and brings to mind images, scenes and people I saw and met during my time in that parched land. The landscape is beautifully rendered and as active an agent in the narrative as any of the characters Billy and Boyd meet with. I'm leaving a big chunk of the action undescribed, most of it in fact, not because I believe in spoilers (I don't), but because I think that no nimbleness of paraphrase on my part could ever capture the emotional richness, vivid imagery, and sheer narrative power of this fine novel. How would you characterize Billy’s relationship with Boyd? Why does he return to Mexico to find out what happened to his brother? What else is he looking for? An essential novel by any measure, The Crossing is luminous and appalling, a book that touches, stops, and starts the heart and mind at once.

What role do animals play in this book? Why, for example, does Billy endure such great danger and hardship for the sake of a wolf? Do any of the characters he meets in Mexico share his feelings about animals? He also meets an opera troupe performing Pagliacci in the wilds, the characters of which curiously parallel Billy and Boyd's relationship with a girl they save along their route.This spiritual aspect to the novel creates a sense of depth. The instinctive behaviors of wolves, the unexplainable cruelty of man, and the peaceful nature of people unencumbered by modernity are periodically explored. It’s this exploration, however, that is drawn out a bit more than necessary at various points throughout the novel. A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact. Most of the protagonists are people of few words; thus the dialogues are few and concise. Additionally, since much of the interaction is with Mexican people, many parts of dialogues are written in untranslated Spanish.

I gatti si muovevano, il fuoco scoppiettava nella stufa. Fuori, nel villaggio abbandonato, il silenzio più profondo. For the enmity of the world was newly plain to him that day and cold and ameliorate as it must be to all who have no longer cause except themselves to stand against it. Grounded in reality, it's like a Western elevated to allegory. An ode to lost ways, lost lives, and the perpetual grind of history. The characters resonate with an abundance of depth by way of a few short lines breathing life through facial expression, postures, terse dialogue. When Billy finally catches the animal, he harnesses her and, instead of killing her, determines to return her to the mountains of Mexico where he believes her original home is located. He develops a deep affection for and bond with the wolf, risking his life to save her on more than one occasion.

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Scusatemi, sto cercando di razionalizzare un po'. Sono sconvolto, davvero sconvolto. Sono arrivato all'ultima riga con gli occhi pieni di lacrime senza sapere neanche bene il perché. So solo che dentro ero completamente scosso. Ancora adesso faccio una fatica immensa a ragionare, a restare lucido. Le parole, di fronte a certe pagine, vengono meno. Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.