The Regal Lemon Tree

The Regal Lemon Tree

One of the late Juan José Saer's most beloved novels, The Regal Lemon Tree shows a master stylist at his best. Set during day and night of New Year's Eve—building up a barbecue that takes on ritual significance—the novel focuses on a couple in the north of Argentina who lost their only son eight years prior. Wenceslao spends the day with his extended family and his memories while his wife—truly paralyzed by grief—refuses to leave their island, which is home to an almost magical lemon tree that blossoms at all times of the year. With the recurring phrase, "dawn breaks, and his eyes are already open," the novel takes on a dreamlike quality, manifesting the troubles the couple has suffered under with an eeriness that calls to mind the work of David Lynch. "A cerebral explorer of the problems of narrative in the wake of Joyce and Woolf, of Borges, of Rulfo and Arlt, Saer is also a stunning poet of place."— The Nation "Juan José Saer must be added to the list of the best South American writers."— Le Monde "To say that Juan José Saer is the best Argentinian writer of today is to undervalue his work. It would be better to say that Saer is one of the best writers of today in any language."—Ricardo Piglia "The most striking element of Saer's writing is his prose, at once dynamic and poetic. . . . It is brilliant."— Harvard Review "Brilliant. . . . Saer's The Sixty-Five Years of Washington captures the wildness of human experience in all its variety."— New York Times "What Saer presents marvelously is the experience of reality, and the characters' attempts to write their own narratives within its excess."— Bookforum Juan José Saer was the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation. The author of numerous novels and short-story collections (including Scars and La Grande ), Saer was awarded Spain's prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for The Event. Six of his novels are available from Open Letter Books. Sergio Waisman has translated sever books of Latin American literature, including The Absent City by Ricardo Piglia, for which he received an NEA Translation Fellowship Award in 2000. His first novel, Leaving , was published in the U.S. in 2004 and in 2010 as Irse in Argentina. His latest translations are Target in the Night by Piglia, The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela, and An Anthology of Spanish-American Modernismo . DAWN BREAKS AND HIS EYES ARE ALREADY OPEN He doesn’t seem to hear the barking of the dogs, or the long, piercing crowing of the roosters, or the singing of the birds gathered on the Chinaberry tree out front, sounding endless and rich; nor does he seem to hear the dogs, El Negro and El Chiquito, pacing restlessly back and forth out in the yard, wagging their tails, excited by dawn, responding to the distant and intermittent, sharp and isolated barks of other dogs on the other side of the river. The crowing of the roosters comes from multiple directions. His eyes open, lying on his back, his hands folded loosely across his gut, Wenceslao doesn’t hear anything but the dark turmoil of the dream retreating from his mind like a black cloud gliding across the sky, revealing the bright circle of the moon. He doesn’t hear anything because after thirty years of hearing the sounds of the roosters and the dogs and the birds and the horses at the break of dawn, he is unable to hear now, in the present, anything but silence. As he bends his right leg and rests the bottom of his foot on the bed, the sheet rises and drags the edge down, uncovering a bit of his shirtless chest and of her shoulder. Lying face down next to him, also awake, but with her eyes closed. She moans, almost inaudibly. As soon as he opens his eyes, Wenceslao knows she is awake―apparently, for those thirty years, she has always awoken a fraction of a second before him―although she does not say anything, or move, or make any sound at all. She sighs later, when he sits up and gets out of bed. But while he is lying down, moving an arm or a leg, starting to wake up, she either pretends to be asleep, or wants to believe she is still asleep. Perhaps she believes that she is in fact still asleep, and that she has not woken up yet, and that she will not wake up until he gets out of bed. The springs of the old iron and bronze bed creak, and the iron slots where the springs connect to the backrest squeak when he bends his leg. At this point, only the largest objects are visible in the small house: the dresser and its oval mirror, tall and frail, and the large chest next to the bed, against the adobe wall, just below the small, wooden window full of vertical cracks through which the first gray light of dawn enters the room. The rest fades into a gray semi-darkness, denser and darker toward the corners and above, in the ridge of the pitched, straw roof. It is there, in that darkness, where Wenceslao looks every morning at daybreak when he opens his eyes: the darkness from outside confirming that the darkness inside h