Álvaro Enrigue, Sudden Death. Natasha Wimmer, translator. Riverhead Books, 2013/2016.
Boring Intro: I have not read Enrigue before. In the blurbs that fill the front and back of this book, he is compared to the Chilean Roberto Bolaño. Sudden Death has a global(Spain, Italy, Mexico) and historical (the conquest of Mexico, the Counter-Reformation, modern day) reach with snaking and intertwined narrative lines, all of which evince much erudition and research, which Enrigue addresses in a few meta-textual chapters.
It is the first novel that I have read about tennis, or the history of tennis, or games that require a ball and court, like the mesoamerican ōllamaliztli. Except that the book is not solely about tennis. In part, it’s about the Conquest and the Counter-Reformation, the Old World and the New World, art and history, Caravaggio and Francisco de Quevedo, Cortés, La Malinche, Cuauhtémoc, Pius IV, Vasco de Quiroga, Don Diego de Alvarado Huanitzin, Charles V, Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn.
This is a novel that accretes themes, personages, histories, books. In a procession of short chapters, Sudden Death seems to fragment and splinter. I was initially frustrated because I had no clue how to follow any of these threads into the labyrinth(s?) that Enrigue was building. The novel didn’t feel Borgesian, because Jorge Luis Borges maps out his labyrinths pretty clearly. That said, there are primarily three elements that structure the novel: First, after her execution, Anne Boleyn’s hair is taken by her executioner back to France to be made into four tennis balls, balls which become tokens of luck and power among the political class in France, Spain, and Italy; Second, an honor duel, a three set tennis match between the Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo and the Italian painter Caravaggio, which Enrigue extends throughout the book; Third, Cortés has the hair of Cuauhtémoc fashioned into a scapular after having him executed, which Cortés wears as a good luck charm for the rest of his life and after which it becomes a token of luck and power, like Anne Boleyn’s balls, for anyone who possesses it.
Yet despite these narrative continuities or anchors, the novel keeps launching into more accretions, as if Enrigue is so fascinated with all that he is researching that he has to find ways to insert it into the novel. Finally, in a chapter a little over 3/4s of the way through the book, titled “Priests Who Were Swine,” Enrigue becomes self-referentially meta-textual and says that he “does not know what this book is about.” He then runs through a series of negations: The book is not a history of tennis; it is not about Quevedo and Caravaggio, although both play a part; it is not about the Counter-Reformation, although it takes place during that period; it is not about Cortes’s conquest or Moctezuma and Cuahtemoc’s losses; it is not about the back and forth between the New and Old Worlds, even though in part it is. Sudden Death cannot be encapsulated in an about. Rather, the book came about (Ha! Ha!) when Enrigue discovered that Caravaggio was not only a great painter but a great tennis player as well and a murderer, a kernel of knowledge that produces lots of narrative lines, actions, fictional and historical characters, historical moments, fictionalized history, interpretive passages, and linkages between the fictive and non-fictive material Enrigue generates from this kernel. By the end of this chapter after laying out so many conditions, he derives a broad, but clearly not definitive, interpretive strategy: “Maybe it’s just a book about how to write this book; maybe that’s what books are all about. A book with a lot of back and forth, like a game of tennis. . . . I don’t know what this book is about. I know that as I wrote it I was angry because the bad guys always win. Maybe all books are written simply because in every game the bad guys have the advantage and that is too much to bear.” A wobbly thesis for the novel.
I find fascinating that once Enrigue eschews the abouts and forgoes much or precise interpretive control, I–as the reader–stop looking for an answer to the question “What is this novel about?” that has been nattering at me as I read. Instead, I stop waiting for the interpretive bullet that would put the novel and all of its various and sundry parts in order, and I reassess what I’ve already read–think about the parallels, connections, metaphors that I’ve noticed–and begin interpreting. Instead of just observing the layers and accretions–all those “nots” that Enrigue doesn’t want to pin down with an about or a series of abouts–this chapter green lights me to thread, weave, pull together, puzzle out, hammer together (whatever analogy works) what I have already read and will read as Sudden Death draws to a close. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of another novel that sends so clear a signal to the reader: “Here is your code. Interpret now.”
If I read Sudden Death as a game rigged for the “bad guys,” what I find least interesting are the bad guys or even the battling opponents or concerns about who will win, since it is a rigged game, anyway. What I find most interesting is the game itself and how it unifies rather than divides all those who participate in it, willingly or not. The match between Quevedo and Caravaggio seems a hybrid between tennis and racquet ball. They play on an enclosed court, and shots must be bounced off of walls or ceiling as they cross the court over the cord (no net in this game). Each has a second, and there are observers who bet throughout the match. Violence is not prohibited–think of a tennis ball as an offensive missile–and at one point in the match Quevedo and Caravaggio end up tussling, falling over one another, and becoming obviously sexually aroused, to the delight and/or horror of everyone else. The duel, initiated by Quevedo, was meant as a way for him to recover his manhood/heterosexuality after being outed the night before with Caravaggio, but the match becomes a way to make all the forces at play visible rather than suppressing some while privileging others. Cortés may have defeated the Aztecs, but not without the help of all those who were tired of being exploited and violated by the Aztecs. Vasco de Quiroga and Juan de Zamárraga may have been sent to Mexico to enforce the Catholic Church’s strict Counter-Reformation era policies, but while Zamárraga becomes notorious for destroying indigenous peoples and cultures under the guise of the strictures of Counter-Reformation faith, Quiroga becomes known for protecting indigenous communities, inspired by Thomas More’s Utopia, which Zamárraga gave him. Master featherwork artist and Aztec nobleman Don Diego de Alvarado Huanitzin watches his whole family destroyed in the most gruesome ways during the Conquest. In the aftermath, Vasco de Quiroga offers him the solace and protection he needs to rebuild his workshop. The pieces he creates are now supplied to the royal houses of Europe, and he is brought to Spain, where he works for the emperor. Don Diego’s work glows with an inner light, and one of his Easter miters is seen by Caravaggio, which revolutionized the way Caravaggio handled light and color. There is no division between Old and New Worlds–no net or cord–but only a back and forth with an ever enlarging court where in a game of beauty and blood, sides change, rules change, but the game is forever. Anne Boleyn and Cuauhtémoc’s hair is not swept into the dustbin of history but become instruments of play, luck and power. Quite a novel.