One man’s quest for “black gold” arouses a village’s hopes and dreams in Héctor Tizón’s short story “Petroleum,” this week’s Translation Tuesday selection. Set in a poor rural village, its flawed protagonist Nicolas leads his community’s search for oil, promising everyone a fast path to a better life. Our narrator is a subtle voice among a colorful cast of characters, and offers an interesting approach to satirizing Nicolas’s quixotic mission: he both adopts the point of view of a “fly on the wall” and actively participates in the town’s naïve aspirations. Nicolas’s unwavering hope and determination lead to a painful truth about his story: under the seemingly mocking veneer of comedy, “Petroleum” hides a heart of tragedy. A poignant (and funny) tale about class, wealth, and the nature of belief in the face of reality.
A long shriek, a holler. It could be heard loud and clear from the viaduct to the municipal garbage dump and even further, interrupting the peaceful siestas throughout the shacks. We had been trying to catch cichlids since noon, carefully lifting the stones on the shore after clouding the water, and we heard it too. We listened closely and then heard it again:
“Hey! Julian, Segundo, Gertrudis, Gabino, Doña Trinidad! Come! Everybody come!”
We tried to figure out where the shouting was coming from and caught on right away. Nicolas was waving his arms and started yelling again, from the immense crown of a willow tree.
“Petroleum!” he shouted, “It’s petroleum!”
I really think that even though I’d heard the word at some point, I didn’t actually know what it meant. That’s probably why, despite all the shouting, Mouse and I didn’t pay much attention to it. For the time being, we were busy with the cichlids. Someone had offered to buy them at two for fifteen cents, and anyways, we liked putting our feet in the water. It was super. I think Mouse, or maybe it was me, I don’t really remember, said:
“Nicolas has lost it again.”
We shrugged our shoulders. The water was great and if we could catch about twenty more cichlids we’d have enough to buy something: the Boca Juniors jersey Mouse wanted and that donkey mask I liked. The one I had seen was a nice big mask with long soft ears and I think it even came with a whistle for Carnival.
And so we kept trying to catch as many cichlids as possible, downstream by the shoreline.
Every now and then a train raced by and we could feel the vibration of its motor and hear its piercing sound. Sometimes we didn’t even lift our heads to look, but when we did, we raised our hands to wave at the distant passengers who were staring out the windows. They seemed sad or distracted.
“Raul,” Mouse said to me from close by. “You know what petroleum is?”
I can’t deny that I regretted not knowing anything about petroleum. But I said:
“Yep.”
“Is it what they put in the engines?” he asked again.
“Yep.”
“What’s it do?”
“Who knows,” I said.
The sun had gone down a while ago. The water was cloudy and we could barely make out our own hands.
“Let’s go,” I said. “We can’t see anything anymore.”
It was hard work carrying the bag of fish between us on our backs.
We crossed the river beach, climbed up the railroad embankment and went down the other side. From there we could see the village lights. There were more on than usual. We heard firework bangs and the dogs’ crazed barking. As we got closer, the wind seemed to be carrying scattered voices, cries of joy and laughter. And we heard the bangs again, and the cackling of jolly poor folks. Finally, we got to the open field next to the beach. The shantytown began there and extended up the ravine almost to the edge of the tall railroad embankment.
We made it to the back patio of Nicolas’s house, dragging our bag of fish. There was a party going on. People were dancing to the screechy, out-of-tune, and monotonous rhythm of the gramophone. Everyone was there. They had left their own shacks to come together, listen to music on the gramophone and have a good time, just like we did during Carnival. Suddenly I remembered the donkey mask and said:
“Look! We have eighty-three.”
My aunt, who had been running all over, laughing loudly and paying absolutely no attention to our bag, said:
“Of what?”
“What do you mean, of what? . . . Of these! The cichlids!”
“Oh! . . . What’re they for?”
“They’re worth more than ten pesos. We counted them one by one. When we sell them Mouse’s gonna buy a jersey and I’m gonna get a donkey mask.”
“Ha ha!” my aunt laughed. “What’re they for? Anyways, come and see . . . there’s petroleum!”
A little disappointed, we left the bag in a corner and followed my aunt.
Bertoldo, an old disabled railroad man, was the one who had discovered the petroleum. All of us—including me, everyone there, and the hundreds who arrived later—listened to his story. And Bertoldo, after wiping some muck off his mouth and spitting to the side, gave the same response to everyone who asked: he had woken up that morning and after drinking mate, decided to plant some calla lilies.
“Bring the shovel,” he had said to his wife. “I’m gonna put a row here, next to this ravine.”
His wife brought the shovel, and after fifteen minutes of strenuous work, looking down into the hole he had just dug, he said:
“There’s mud here. It’s rotten and black and it stinks.”
He kept digging, but the mud was not as thick further down, and the bottom of the hole was covered by a black, liquid substance. He stopped working to ask a neighbor and then another and then another. They dug new holes and saw the same thing each time. That’s when Nicolas began spreading the news with his shrieking that made everyone’s heart stop.
That night, while some people were dancing and laughing and having a great time around the gramophone, others scoured the area from the beach to the slope of the ravine, sniffing out the corners. From a distance, the light from the street lamps seemed to move back and forth, stop, and then shift again, from one side to the other.
Nicolas was now roaming along the tracks like a mad man, shouting to strangers at the top of his voice, inviting them to come to the house:
“Come! Come!” he said. “We’ll all get rich!”
After a while two bums arrived, and a beggar and an old blind man, led by a boy who had a bundle of newspapers under his arm.
The celebration lasted all night long. The laughter continued until daybreak, interrupted only by the racket of the trains passing by.
Early on the next day, everyone was up and about, and when Mouse and I returned from selling the cichlids, we were surprised to find hundreds of people digging holes, hacking away at trees, destroying small gardens and plunging shovels into puddles. Everyone was helping.
At noon when the priest arrived, the place looked like an active encampment. Some of the women had cooked on the beach and were giving out food to everyone who was working and to the curious bystanders too. My aunt butchered our only hen and one of the bums was passing around the pieces.
The priest arrived, shading himself with a black parasol. After conversing with some of the men, he climbed up on a rock and, among other things, said:
“Let us not boast, my children, and let us give thanks to the Lord. He has bestowed this upon you because he loves the poor.”
After that, he went around the whole shantytown pouring holy water on the ground, rapidly uttering incomprehensible words in a very quiet voice. Then he ate a few empanadas. Some dogs barked at him frantically during the ceremony. In the midst of the commotion, the old blind man, holding the boy’s hand, remained seated on a tree trunk, and every now and then he’d bite into an ear of roasted corn, staring into the distance with his empty eyes.
Nicolas, who had used up all his savings in one shot to buy himself a new suit, was wandering around with his ear to the ground, trying to hear beneath the surface.
The next day, everyone was called to gather under a big ceiba tree. Nicolas spoke, imposing silence. Clean and well-dressed in their Sunday best, the men and women listened attentively.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Nicolas. “We’ll be rich! We’ll have two-story houses, and we’ll wear shoes and ride around in rented cars. You get what it means to be rich?”
Nobody answered and so Nicolas continued speaking.
“Everybody’ll be able to buy a radio and a hat and maybe a horse and hens and pigs, you get it? And we’ll be able to save money for when we’re old, not like now. And we’ll be able to buy medicine so we don’t go around rotting like garbage. We’ll be rich. You get what it means to be rich?”
“The rich screw the poor,” someone responded.
“Not only that,” answered Nicolas without paying much attention, “we’ll can the petroleum and they’ll send us money and we’ll have all that and maybe even a piece of land. For real this time.”
After the meeting under the ceiba tree, everyone returned to the search. Some people had already begun to collect the liquid in buckets to store it.
A day went by. Then another. Somebody had given the old blind man and the boy a place to stay and the bums settled in at Doña Gertrudis’s house.
From dawn to dusk people worked, moving rocks and trying to dig more boreholes, or staring for hours into the ones that were already there.
When a train passed, everyone took a break and waved at the passengers, raising their arms and motioning with their hats.
And we abandoned our fishing because we had to help distribute the food, which was already running low.
On the fifth day, the bums left and the specialists arrived. They were three blonde men and they barely spoke. They looked all around, surveying from one end to the other. Everyone watched them with excitement, following close behind, hoping to hear some good news. But nobody understood anything.
The next day the men came back, and they brought more men with them. They climbed up to the edge of the ravine, crossed over the railroad tracks and then returned. When they left, they took three big cans full of petroleum with them.
And then they didn’t come back. Eventually we found out what had happened: there was no oil field. It was just a small underground reserve that had leaked from the railroad’s broken cistern.
That was the end of it. Mouse and I decided to return to our fishing, mostly because it was almost Carnival and we needed money to buy streamers.
The trains continued racing by, the ground vibrating as they passed.
But from that first day on, Nicolas had gotten into the habit of climbing up to the top of the willow tree and spending hours watching from up there, coming down every now and then to dig a small hole with remarkable determination, plunging a shovel into the soft, damp depths of the earth. Then he’d just stand there, staring at the tip of the shovel for an eternity. Without uttering a single word.
Translated from the Spanish by Alexandra Falek
Héctor Tizón (1929–2012) was a writer from Argentina (from Yala, in the province of Jujuy). He was a lawyer, journalist, diplomat, and exile who lived in Mexico, Paris, Milan, and Madrid before ultimately returning to his native country. He was the author of seventeen published works, including more than ten novels, short stories, essays, and young adult literature. Tizón’s novels have been translated into French, Russian, Polish, English, and German. He was awarded the Argentine Academy of Letters literature prize and various Konex Foundation Awards, and he was decorated by the French government with the title of Knight of the French Order of Arts and Letters.
Alexandra Falek is a senior lecturer in the Expository Writing Program at New York University. She has been teaching at NYU since 2002, where she taught for many years in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese Languages and Literatures (teaching Latin American literature, cinema and cultural history) and is now on the faculty of EWP (teaching writing). She received her PhD in Latin American Literatures and Cultures from NYU and her BA from UC Berkeley. She translates literary works from Spanish to English.
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