Good Offices
by: Evelio Rosero
It’s a short and taut novel. Good Offices by Evelio Rosero, out earlier this month on New Directions, puts on full display the fallibility of man; in this instance man’s failure lies in man’s resignation. The main character is a hunchback named Tancredo. His greatest fear is becoming a wild animal by succumbing to his primal instincts of love and happiness and rebellion.
by: Evelio Rosero
It’s a short and taut novel. Good Offices by Evelio Rosero, out earlier this month on New Directions, puts on full display the fallibility of man; in this instance man’s failure lies in man’s resignation. The main character is a hunchback named Tancredo. His greatest fear is becoming a wild animal by succumbing to his primal instincts of love and happiness and rebellion.
Abuse of authority seems to be a sentiment that often
pervades Rosero’s literature, in conjunction with the haunted characters that
impel the narrative. Tancredo is the puppet of the Catholic Church and, in so
many definitions, Tancredo is a slave of the Catholic Church and it is as his
character encroaches upon enlightenment that we see the story progress.
There are many surreal moments in the narrative that are
given verisimilitude by Rosero that could bring shame to documentary. He is
unforgiving and brutal in his treatment of his villains. While some scenes are
somewhat surreal, there is nothing fantastical about the book, except the fantasy
that Rosero is likely living through his book of really giving it to the bad
guys.
Tancredo is not alone in his captivity. The goddaughter of
Father Almida, Sabina Cruz and the Lilias join Tancredo in his repression. The
Lilias are three elderly women that are responsible for cooking food for the
poor, huge meals of which Tancredo is in charge. Each day’s meal belongs to a
group of the depraved masses: old people, the blind, whores, families and
street kids.
It is the lunch in which Tancredo must feed the old people
that seems to haunt him most.
“…sooner or later he
raises his head and it seems he is still in the company of all those faces with
their toothless, drooling mouths, which open ever wider and swallow him up, one
arm after the other, one leg after the other; they gulp down his head at a
single go. They do not devour him with their mouths alone: they devour him with
their eyes, those eyes, dead eyes.”
When Father Almida is forced to leave for one night, over
which Mass must be held, Father Matamoros fills the void. Matamoros, not
without his own nefarious inclinations, gives the church’s inhabitants a
glimpse of freedom. It’s a door that, once opened, cannot be shut. The most
extreme means will be taken to keep this door of freedom ajar.
This is a love story perverted almost beyond recognition,
along with a social critique, pleasantly lost to the gripping nature of the
compelling plot Rosero has created in this short book. He does more in 119
pages than I’ve seen most authors accomplish in their huge volumes that double
as free weights.
-C. Hogue
