Earth's Sunny Solar System

 by

Kathryn A. Kopple

   

Robert Rauschenberg

    Small hands gripped the corners. It was a girl in a baseball cap and loose-fitting shorts with a puzzle in her hands. Her head was down as she studied the puzzle art on the box. Planets flung out across space with earth surrounded by a thick, blue halo off to the left. It was the most difficult puzzle in the store. All puzzles pose specific challenges but what counts is the number of pieces; this solar extravaganza boasted a thousand of them.

    I coughed to let the girl know she wasn’t alone in the aisle. She glanced in my direction, her round face half hidden under the baseball cap, fingers still gripping the puzzle box like talons. Kids grip only the things they want. Their little fingers are endowed with strength beyond their height, weight, stamina. They are also precocious, going after games and puzzles that their parents don’t understand or like—and most of all fear will wind up in a mess on the living room floor. I’ve witnessed the tug-of-wars between adults and children, and the adults generally win, but not before something ends up on the floor. The Earth’s Sunny Solar System was dropped a lot. “Now look what you did!” “You made me!” “Don’t talk back to your mother!” “But you promised!” “You don’t even like puzzles!” The quarrels nasty and dry-eyed repeating like an unhappy song chorus—and the Earth’s Sunny Solar System, caught in the middle, going nowhere but back on the shelf. And yet, despite past disappointments, I held out hope that this would be the day I’d finally sell Earth’s Sunny Solar System.

“Nice puzzle,” I said.

“Dope,” she replied.

I suggested we look inside and put out my hands.

She wouldn’t let go of the box. “The earth only looks blue from space.”

“Makes you realize how much they paid attention to the details when they made this puzzle.”

“It’s mostly blue. If it were all blue, the whole planet would be covered in water.”

“Excellent point.” I didn’t care if the earth were flamingo pink because all I wanted was to move that puzzle off the shelf.

“It’s going to happen. I read about the ground disappearing.”

“That would be wild. I guess anything could happen.”

“Anything does,” she said.

    I decided to redirect the conversation. “If that puzzle doesn’t interest you, I could show you something else. We have lots of games. Do you like Parcheesi?”

“I’m good,” she said.

“Yeah, that puzzle you’re holding is the best. Should we ring it up?”

“Maybe later.” The girl put the puzzle on the shelf and walked out the store.

    Puzzles have a shelf life. After a year on the shelf, the boxes take on a ravaged appearance. Earth’s Sunny Solar System was going on three years. I peeked inside to discover a spider that turned out to be a hermit crab. Alone and unshelled, the pitiful thing scrambled over the jumbled cosmos.

    I wondered how many hermits escaped their crab-it-tats—if they were hiding (and dying) all over the store. I hurried to check and found the lot of them in distress, climbing the silicon walls desperate to get out. The mice didn’t look particularly happy either. They were thin and mangy, and no one wanted them. A garter snake hissed as I walked by. A menagerie of hostility caused by shortages in the supply chain. The chain, I imagined, wound the globe east and west, north and south; it held the world together. Now, that chain was coming apart link by link. We’d soon have to start feeding the mice to the snakes—and where that would leave the hermits I had no idea.

    When I mentioned my concerns to the manager, he took a hit off his vape. “What do you expect me to do about it?” Then, back turned to me, he lapsed into reverie. Unlike the hermits, he appeared pleasantly lost.

“Uh, maybe I could have a hit?”

“You’re too young to vape.”

“I’m eighteen.”

“In answer to your question, no. And get back to work.”

“But the hermits…”

“Fuck if I know,” he said.

“That’s all you got for me?”

“Pretty much.”

    Days later, the hermits and crab-it-tats vanished altogether. I gave the manager a look. “Was there a seagull attack?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The crab-it-tats are gone.”

“Yeah, the crabs. Why are you bothering me about gulls?”

“Gulls eat hermits in the wild.”

He hit his vape. “You got some weird obsessions, that’s for sure.”

“Because I care about the hermits?”

“For starters.” Lemon haze poured out his nostrils. “It’s for the best.”

    I nodded, not because I agreed. I just knew—and that certainty gutted me. “Did you have to?” I got a rag and started dusting. People wandered the store lost in aisles of emptiness. Sometimes, they bumped into one another, saying “Excuse me” in zombified voices. No one shouted. No fights broke out. The sluggishness and monotony made me wish someone would start something. Time went faster when the kids and adults got into it. Or, when someone got caught shoplifting. It was store policy to take the offender straight to security. Her name was Lal. She was tough, like she’d been born to put people in a line up. She paced the catwalk (her name for the long plank held high in the air by two ladders) and, if she saw anyone sneaking around, she’d blast the suspect with her bullhorn. “You! In the Run-DMC t-shirt and cut-offs. Front of the store!” Typically, people would run, a stupid thing to do but people weren’t smart when stealing—always thinking no one was watching when no one escaped Lal. Maybe that was the real crime. Thinking they could get away with it. Not under Lal’s watch. She was a one-woman panopticon.

“Hey!”

“What!”

“How about you come up?”

    I hesitated. It never occurred to me what life up there was like—that I, a mere salesclerk, would receive an invitation from Lal on the catwalk. Things like that just didn’t happen. The catwalk was where Lal worked and the rest of us underlings kept to the aisles, cash registers, and restrooms. Everyone and everything in its place. My place was below while Lal worked from on high.

“Come on up.”

“Okay.” I stuffed the cleaning rag in my back pocket. The ladder shuddered. I looked up at Lal. In what universe was this a good idea? I made a few calculations. Lal weighed approximately 150 lbs. I weighed in at 140 lbs. Our combined weight might push the scaffold’s weight-bearing capacities too far. A net was called for, at the very least a bunch of boxes—anything to break the fall.

“What’s the matter? Afraid of heights?”

“Nope.”

“Then get your ass up here.”

I girded myself for the climb. It was a lot farther to the top than it looked. When I managed to pull myself onto the plank, I was panting hard. Sweat stung my eyes.

“Cat got your tongue.” Lal gave me a freaky smile. She reached out her hand. “Stand.”

“Up?”

“You can’t appreciate the entire effect sitting. You have to stand. It gives you added height.”

“I figured.” Closing my eyes (which really was the stupidest thing to do while suspended mid-air), I managed to get my feet up under me and stood. “The view! It’s wild.”

“You can see all.”

“I never knew.”

“You think I work this job for the lousy minimum wage! No, sir. It’s the rush that gets me out of my warm bed in the morning. Up here, I feel alive, free. It’s the best.”

    I glanced floorward. The linoleum looked hard, cold and cruel. There was always the chance I might survive a fall but, unlike Lal, I didn’t receive employee benefits. If I cracked my skull open, no HMO was going to cover surgery. I decided to sit.

    Lal remained on her feet. “I could weep to see the store. It’s so beautiful when filled with people. I see their happiness, like this one time a guy comes in. He’s very rich looking. Nice clothes. He has a woman with him. She’s also very rich looking. They have a child with blonde hair. A perfect angel. They buy bags of toys. The child gets a bunny. They don’t even try to steal anything.”

“That is amazing.”

Lal grew solemn. “I never had kids.”

“Me neither.”

“Don’t be a smart ass.”

“I wasn’t,” I said. “It’s just that we don’t get a lot of families these days. There was a little girl, though.”

“The one in the baseball cap.”

“I thought for sure she would buy that puzzle.”

“The one with the crazy cover and a thousand pieces.”

“It’s called Earth’s Sunny Solar System.”

“Whatever. She didn’t bite.”

“No, she didn’t.”

    Lal rested her hand on my shoulder. “If things keep up like this…” She paused, the logical conclusion to her thought difficult to articulate. Where would she go? Or me for that matter?

“It’s going to be okay,” I said. “They’ll get the supply chain up and running. When they do, this place will be stocked to bursting, and you will be back in business catching the bad guys.”

“If only.”

I let her have a moment. The scene below was dreary. Shell-shocked customers going round in circles. Cashiers slumped over the registers. The manager walking the floor vaping. “I’m going down.”

“Stay a bit longer.”

“No, really, I’m on the clock. I should get down.”

“Your choice.”

    Easy for her to say. She loved it up there. She felt alive, free. I felt like I wanted to throw up. There’s no easy way off a plank. I had to roll over on my belly, kick out my foot till I found the ladder, then slide down until I could use my hands to hold on while I descended the rungs. I could feel Lal pacing above me. I closed my eyes and kept going. Above me, Lal cackled in amusement. I stepped away from the ladder. She waved down at me. I walked briskly to the bathroom, splashed my face with cold water, used the urinal, washed my hands, splashed my face, and used the urinal again.

    The following night, I stayed late. After the crab-it-tat fiasco, I wanted to make sure the animals lived through the night. I also figured that they had to notice what was happening, that they too felt the scarcity as keenly as the rest of us. My presence might offer some comfort.

    The door rang. I must have forgotten to lock up. “We’re closed!” At the end of Aisle C, near the front of the store, there was the girl in the baseball cap. “Oh, it’s you.”

“I want to do it.”

“Excuse me?”

“The puzzle. I want to do it.”

“And if I let you, will you buy it?”

“I don’t have money.”

“I can’t let you have the puzzle. I can let you look at the bunnies. But just for a minute. Then, you have to go. No one is supposed to be here after hours.”

“No one is here anyways.”

“Even more reason for you to go home.”

    She shrugged. Home didn’t seem to do much for her. I began to suspect there was more going on, like she was in foster care or homeless or… both. On the other hand, she looked fine. No visible signs of stress.

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“It’s about to rain.”

    I went to check. I pushed against the door only to feel it push back hard.

“That’s the rain,” she said. “It’s coming.”

“It’s just the usual deluge for this time of year.”

She started down the aisle. “We should do the puzzle.”

    The rain started in, harder and faster; water rushed under the door, around it, over it. I grabbed the girl’s hand. “Up the scaffold.” She didn’t ask questions. She began climbing. I stayed below and spotted her. After she reached safety, I followed. The ladder rungs were slimy and slippery. The lights flickered. I kept climbing until I was able to ease myself onto the plank. “It’s here,” she said.

    I stared through my knees. The watery umbra sloshed up one wall and down another, sweeping along plushies, rubber balls, gift bags, costumes, deluxe Legos, light sabers—and dozens of other gizmos ripped from their packaging and bumping around in the shadows.

“It seems to have stopped,” I said with forced optimism.

“There’s more coming.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I saw it from my house.”

“Where’s your house?”

“It’s not there anymore,” she said. “It was washed away with the others.”

“That’s terrible.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I asked her name.

“The name I use?”

“Uh, okay.”

“Yessel.”

“That’s your username?”

“One of them,” she said.

    In an otherwise functioning world, I’d try to get more information from her—like, place of origin, age, and address. Right now, our address was the mess down below and our precarious refuge above. I felt cold, queasy. Yessel put her arms around me. We sat without speaking. Beneath us, the water lapped hypnotically as the store grew darker until only the red neon of the exit signs were visible—and soon they started going dark. “Are you okay?” I asked to remind myself I was alive and okay.

“It’s still coming in.”

“It’s stopped.”

“It’s coming closer.”

I pulled her arms tighter around my waist. “Yessel, it’s going to be okay. I promise.”

“We’re stuck.”

“Only till help comes.”

“We don’t have that long,” she said.

    I suddenly felt the water around my ankles, then my knees. I braced myself. There really was only one way out. We’d have to swim.

“What is it about that puzzle?” I asked her. I lowered myself slowly into the water.

“It’s how I always imagined it.”

“The solar system?” I treaded vigorously. The water was freezing.

“Except the solar system is a lot bigger than a thousand pieces.” She reached over to test the water. “It’s like ice.”

“Don’t think about it.”

    She slipped down off the scaffold. I grabbed her under the shoulders. “Put your arms around my neck and don’t let go.” I held her fast in the whipping current. The building groaned. The water shoved us up against the large windows. Above the sky had disappeared behind thick, greenish clouds. Yessel was still hanging on. I kicked out a foot and the store entrance collapsed. The water swept us out across the parking lot, down block after block, before we were spit onto a mound of land. We believed the worst of it was over, though the ground was a sponge and every step sucked us further into the ooze. Somewhere, a shuttle rocketed through space. Earth’s Sunny Solar System. Yessel and I struggled on, walking and sinking—and consoling ourselves with the idea that, if we could survive here, we could survive anywhere.

Credits:  This story first appeared in the December 2022 issue of Blue Mountain Review.

Personal Tragedies in Rodrigo Hasbún’s Los afectos

by

Kathryn A. Kopple 

In 2015, the Bolivian writer Rodrigo Hasbún published Los afectos (Affections), a slim volume loosely based on the Ertl family, a clan foisted on the reader with precious little introduction. “The day papa returned from Nanga Parbat (with some heart-rending images, of a beauty that wasn’t human), he told us while we ate dinner that mountain climbing had become too technical and what mattered was being lost, that he wouldn’t climb anymore.” His wife and daughters take in their papa’s words, careful not to interrupt, as he sermonizes about communing with nature. These speeches – the reader learns – go on uninterrupted for lengthy periods and, finally, culminate in a bruised vision of the world that, in a fine turn of phrase, can only be healed by seeking out those places “where God is untroubled by our ingratitude and sordidness”. A lofty sentiment and one that is in lockstep with the character’s historical counterpart: the Nazi cinematographer and alpinist Hans Ertl – the same man who, throughout the 1930s and ’40s, fully earned his reputation as Hitler’s photographer. Hasbún, however, is not deeply invested in this aspect of Ertl’s story; he is drawn to the private life of the family man. Untethered by all but the most tenuous historical references, Ertl and every character in the book become protagonists in a personal tragedy.

Throughout this tragedy, the intimacy of perspectives creates the feel of memoir, albeit one that is subject to fragmentation. Although Hasbún is best known as an acclaimed author, his scholarly work focuses on the interconnectedness between diary, biography and literature. He takes issue with the idea that diaries must be read at face value, as testimonials, when their very existence opposes worldly interests and demands. The diarist writes for a reader of one, presumably herself without, as Hasbún contends, “deference to the literary institution or publishing world." Diaries may enter the public domain but their purpose is other. They are reclusive, hermetic. It is as if there is no activity more solitary – or personal – than that of the diarist. Nor is it coincidental that Los afectos is a book imbued with solitude. Hans Ertl’s treks up mountains and through Amazon forest are journeys into the heart of solitude. He is the man who “leaves." His wife, Aurelia, languishes in the imposed solitude caused by her husband’s absence. Each of his three daughters is a solitary creature unable to sustain familial ties and relationships. Solitude of this sort is profoundly Heideggerian, that is, inescapable.

 Israel Beltrán

In fact, the entire novel reads like a Heideggerian fable. The characters are cast into a strange, new world to live out their finitude with precious few inner resources. Severed from their German homeland because of Hans’s Nazi past, their identities are stripped away; they must begin from scratch in Bolivia. In the high-altitude, low-oxygen city of La Paz, time is as precious as air. Hans wastes no time between expeditions. He returns from filming in Nanga Parbat already determined to set off again in search of Paititi, the lost Inca city of gold. His two eldest daughters, Monika and Heidi, are intensely aware that the clock is ticking and they are growing older by the second. The youngest daughter, Trixi, spends a melancholy Christmas alone with her mother, Aurelia, who tells the nearly thirteen-year-old that life is longer than people imagine, and that at times it feels “interminable." Trixi sees her mother as terribly lonely. She fails to understand how she has too much time on her hands. In her abject pronouncements, Aurelia echoes Heidegger’s assertion that it is through boredom our awareness of time is heightened. Boredom leads to gloominess but forces us to reflect upon the groundlessness of our existence. Aurelia smokes, drinks, and reminisces but, most importantly, she philosophizes. Sadly, it’s all downhill for her from there.

In contrast with Aurelia’s lassitude, the eldest daughter, Monika, suffers fits of anxiety. Heidi, who fears and resents her sister, describes these episodes as grotesque. “It was ugly to see her writhing about, I won’t deny it. It was shocking, horrible even, to the point that, the last time, we had to tie her up.” The episode passes and Heidi suspects that Monika’s outbursts serve an ulterior purpose: they are a means of holding her distracted parents’ attention. Her resentment of her sister intensifies when she learns that their father is taking Monika with him on his next expedition. Heidi demands to go. Her father agrees in a way that unnerves the girl. “As if he had predicted all of it, including the questions I was asking, a strange smile appeared on his face. My chest froze and I looked at my sister and she at me and at that moment neither of us knew what to say.” A limit has been reached. Words fail. There is no turning back for Heidi. Now, like her father, she is the one who leaves. She also falls in love with Rudi, one of Hans’s assistants. Most significantly, she becomes lost, psychically speaking, unable to remember the day or the reason for the journey. This stripping away of perspective, time, and purpose brings her closer to what Heidegger calls authenticity.

Authenticity, for Heidegger, refuses imitation, it can’t be contained in archetypes. Rather, it prefigures socialization as an ideal mode of being. Hans may be the paterfamilias of the Ertl clan but he is, above all things, a man who is true to himself. He becomes disillusioned with mountaineering because alpinists have become mere technicians. Averageness disgusts him. In contrast, he aspires to all things sublime. The rain forest is no less sublime than the glacier. Sublimity involves terror. It is awe-inspiring. Add to that a mythical Inca city of gold – buried in all that forest – and the quest promises certain glory. At one point, he heaps praise on Hiram Bingham, the man credited with discovering Machu Picchu, thus inserting himself in the tradition of great explorers. But then he has already proven his worth by filming the 1936 Olympics and being at Rommel’s side during the war. Hans also possesses a certain erotic magnetism. When Trixi asks her mother if she fell in love with him at first sight, she replies, “The second I saw him…. But I wasn’t the only one. I think everyone on the committee was a little in love with him.” And then, not least, his eye never fails him. Whatever he films turns to magic. Authenticity – the discovery of the ideal self – goes hand in hand with exceptionalism.

For Hans’s daughters, living with such a man is overwhelming. Their feelings for him cause rifts and divisions – an utter lack of peace reigns over the family. It’s apparent that Hans loves Monika the most, ostensibly because she tests him. Of all the ironies to be found in the novel, the fact that Monika will go on to become a left-wing revolutionary is the most poetic. (But then, Heidegger too was a revolutionary. He found academic philosophy guilty of all manner of sins, not the least of them complacency. There is an air of nihilistic joy that runs throughout his writing, a sense that once the old norms have been destroyed, philosophy will arise like a phoenix from the ashes. And no doubt, Heidegger thought of himself as that phoenix. It’s also true that he was a committed Nazi and antisemite.) In Los afectos, it is Monika who forces the issue of Hans’s Nazism. She accuses him of being a “lackey of the powerful, a disgusting fascist”. Her words open a great wound in him. After her assassination by the Bolivian military, the elderly Hans has a grave dug for her, literally forcing him once and for all to stare into the abyss.

When Los afectos first came out, it was marketed as a historical novel. From the disclaimer on the first page of the book to his assertions in numerous interviews, Hasbún is adamant that the book is historical only in the broadest sense of the term: as story. The story involves multiple points of view, lack of chronological cohesion, and a directness of expression that breaks down aesthetic distance. Instead of history, we are presented with instances that turn inward, personal, and reflective. Out of this assemblage of disparate voices, the question that arises is why history at all? Especially since Hasbún claims to use as little biographical detail as possible. The author seems to be pulled in by the unwritten aspects of the story – in what the historical record either suppressed or omitted. Nazism recedes into the background, almost imperceptible, as if opening a window to let in some fresh air.

In the essay “Fascinating Fascism”, Susan Sontag remarks that it may “seem ungrateful or rancorous to refuse to cut loose” the work of Nazi propagandists from their past. She takes issue with the rehabilitation of Leni Riefenstahl despite the cinematographer’s ongoing commitment to fascism. The same could be said of Hans Ertl. He never became disillusioned with Nazi Germany: it was post-war, democratic Germany that failed him. Moreover, during his self-imposed exile in Bolivia, he sought out the friendship of the notorious Klaus Barbie. Barbie is thought to have been involved in Monika’s assassination by Bolivian security forces in 1973. Given his friendship with Barbie – and, as mentioned in the novel, Ertl’s relationships with high-ranking members of the Bolivia military – he may have had more to do with his daughter’s death than the novel suggests. Whatever role he played (active or passive), Ertl never repudiated Nazism or his fascist associations. He would go on to write two memoirs, both of which are imbued with sentimental accounts of mountaineering and exploration. Both memoirs pay homage to the Germany of his youth.

However Hasbún adjusts the lens – the ever-shifting angles – it’s scarcely possible to insulate Los afectos – or any work of art – from its source material. The connection between old-world fascism and new-world exile is not severed but revised. Nazism may find itself reduced to mere figments, but even these have the power to mesmerize. The Argentine writer Manuel Puig, in his masterpiece El beso de la mujer araña (Kiss of the Spider Woman), explores the Nazi aesthetic, and how it catches us in a web of repulsion and attraction. The goddesses of Nazi cinema are no less beautiful because they are instruments of a brutal regime. They fascinate regardless. They provide an ideal of physical beauty and an antidote to the ugliness of existence. Fascism is predicated on a host of aesthetic values, among them the dictum that, without beauty, life is simply not worth living. Los afectos offers us a taste of such a life in the Ertl family saga. They are doomed and therefore beautiful. To paraphrase Heidegger, beauty is only as true as it is tragic.

Notes

All translations from the novel are mine unless otherwise cited. Regarding Hasbún’s critical investigations, please see Enea Zaramella, “Interview with Rodrigo Hasbún” in The White Review, https://www.thewhitereview.org/feature/interview-rodrigo-hasbun/, accessed 22 August 2021. A thorough discussion of the fascist aesthetic of Hans Ertl’s memoirs can be found in Caroline Schaumann’s “Memories of Cold in the Heat of the Tropics: Hans Ertl’s ‘Meine Wilden Dreißiger Jahre’” in Colloquia Germanica, vol. 43, no. 1/2, 2010, pp. 97–112, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23981639, accessed 22 August 2021. Susan Sontag’s essay “Fascinating Fascism” may be found at UC Santa Barbara, https://marcuse.faculty.history.ucsb.edu/classes/33d/33dTexts/SontagFascinFascism75.htm , accessed 22 August 2021. Los afectos has been translated into English under the title Affections by Sophie Hughes.

Credits:  This review first appeared in Ars Notoria.

About the Author:  Kathryn A. Kopple holds a doctorate in Latin American literature (NYU). Her focus is the surrealist poetry of the Rio de la Plata. She has also published original poetry and prose in multiple venues, including The Threepenny Review, Bellevue Literary Review, and The Shell Game: Writers Play with Borrowed Forms. She has published two novels – Little Velásquez and The Leaving Year – set in Spain. Kathryn also hosts the literary blog The Leaving Year.