What is a day? What is the world when everything inside you shudders? The sky darkens, houses swell, merge, topple, voices rise in unison to become a single sound. Enough! Who is that shouting? Her soul is black, a soul like the fields in a storm, without a single ray of light, silent as a corpse in the ground.
Sixteen year-old Nefer has a secret. A secret growing inside her body that is pushing her away from her family and deeper into herself. Desperate to resist the abrupt transition to womanhood that has been thrust upon her, her predicament is the central focus of Argentinian writer Sara Gallardo’s January. Originally published in 1958, when Gallardo was only twenty-seven, this unsparing novella about rape, pregnancy and abortion in a world where a woman’s body and being was strictly defined by church and convention, has come to be regarded as required reading in her native country. It has now been released in Frances Riddle and Maureen Shaughnessy’s English translation.
This brief novella simmers with stark intensity as it follows Nefer’s conflicted and tumultuous emotions as she struggles to cope with her unfortunate circumstances alone in a deeply religious rural community in mid-twentieth century Argentina. The youngest of three daughters, her life on her family’s farm is one filled with hard work and constant expectations. She admires her disabled father’s quiet dignity, resents her sister’s fulsome beauty and fears her mother’s large, threatening presence. And, in spite of her condition, she nurses a hopelessly passionate crush on her handsome neighbour, Negro. In her mind, in fact, it is he who is responsible for her pregnancy although the child is not his. She had invested so much time and desire into the design and creation of a dress for her eldest sister’s wedding imagining it might magically catch his eye and, had she not been so intent on making an impression, she believes she would not have inadvertently attracted the attention of the older man who forced himself that day.
Playing out against a landscape defined by blistering heat, vast open spaces, sparse shade and clouds of dust, Nefer’s experience of her surroundings is highly charged and fragmented. She swings from rage to fear to jealousy to waves of crushing guilt. Unable to escape the stain of her strict Catholic upbringing, the sorry state of her soul is a constant concern. Anxiety eats away at her. She cannot help but think back to a time when she was carefree, when the world still held promise. But she remains determined to face her fate on her own terms, no matter where it takes her. Gallardo brings us right into the heart of her effort to assert control over her mind, her body and her life, as in this scene where she slips out during siesta to sneak into town in search of a possible medicinal intervention:
She kicks and takes off at a gallop, steering toward the thick grass that will absorb the footfalls. She doesn’t want to think about the end of her journey, about the old lady she’s never seen but with whom all her hope now lies. Her eyes pick out objects one at a time, attributing an exaggerated importance to each. Thistle, she thinks, thistle partridge, dung, anthill, heat; and then she hears – one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four – as the hooves hit the ground. Slowly, sweat begins to appear behind the horse’s ears and runs in dark strands down his neck where the reins chafe against his coat, churning up dirty foam. Little voices, little voices speak to Nefer, but she continues her journey indifferent to them. Cow, she thinks, a Holstein, and another and another. That one’s overheated. Lapwings. Two lapwings and their chick. Those piercing shrieks!
In less than 120 pages, January offers a vivid, internalized account of a young woman facing impossible odds. Gallardo was born in 1931 to a wealthy Buenos Aires family with broad agricultural interests and this, her first book, shows a clear sensitivity to the social dynamics impacting disadvantaged rural communities and the suffocating influence of the Catholic mission churches. But beyond the constraints of her time, it is Nefer’s private horror, as reflected in her relationship to other people and to the natural environment, that makes this such a compelling—and timeless—read.
January by Sara Gallardo is translated from the Spanish by Frances Riddle and Maureen Shaughnessy and published by Archipelago Books.
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