Pages 39–41
Pedro's son finally realizes this is a ghost story, gets a name
Huge update today for everyone (me) annoyed that the narrator of this book has just been “unnamed main character” all this time.
Previously, the town’s ghosts took over the narrative, as the ghost of Pedro Páramo’s lackey, don Fulgor Sedano, interrupted our unnamed narrator (THE LAST DAY OF THIS) for the last couple passages to talk about the early days of working for Pedro Páramo’s leadership of the family business which involves 1) consolidating power and resources through moves that range from technically the rules to totally ignoring the rules, and 2) nothing that helps me figure out what the Páramo family business actually is, although that may not really be that important at the end of the day.
ALSO IT’S GHOST STORY SHIT O’CLOCK.
Pages 39–41
We return to the unnamed main character (god damn we’re so close) walking along with Damiana Cisneros, a woman who – before Fulgano interrupted the story – picked him up from doña Eduviges’s haunted house to let him stay in her (totally not haunted) house instead. She tells him that “this town is full of echos”, which sounds mysterious but also just conveniently explains to the reader that the narrator switching and nonchronological narrative actually has an in-universe explanation, which is sick, ngl.
–Laughter. Old laughter, as if it were tired of laughing. And voices that are weary from overuse. You hear all those things. I imagine the day will come when these sounds wither away.
That’s what Damiana Cisneros told me as we walked across the town.
She tells him that she figured this out herself because, even though she lives outside of the town itself, a party one night kept her up, but when she went to town to investigate, the town was empty.
The dialogue switches from dashes to guillemets after this point, which – I think – means Damiana is just thinking the rest of this, but the boundary between life and death and all that is fuzzy in this town so I think maybe our narrator (SO SOON) is experiencing this too. Which, again, sick. She thinks about how the echoes stopped scaring her, how awful they are when the voices sound “so clear you might recognize them” but the person isn’t really there, how this happened to her on her way into town that very night, where she ran into the ghost of her own damn sister.
»–Damiana! Pray to God for me, Damiana?
»She removed her rebozo1 and I recognized the face of my sister Sixtina.
»–What’re you doing here? –I asked.
She thinks about how her oldest sister Dixtina died when she was twelve. She also explains that her family was sixteen people, which, if she’s only counting siblings, jesus christ, her poor mother was just never not pregnant.
»There were sixteen of us in the family, so just imagine how long she’s been gone. And look at her now, still wantering the earth. So don’t be frightened, Juan Preciado, if you hear echoes that are more recent.»
Two things here, 1) maybe he’s frightened because he’s just trying to do the math of how long someone has to be pregnant for to have sixteen children, 2) WE FINALLY KNOW OUR NARRATOR’S GODDAMN NAME. Huge day for Obsidian updates over here. Thank goodness it renames everything automatically. Look how much shit it had to update after I changed the name of this note.
Our unnamed narrator Juan asks Damiana if his mother also told her that he was coming to town (remember Eduviges claimed that she had gotten in touch with her about this news, so we already know being dead doesn’t get in the way of such things). But then we get one of my favorite things about this book after its staggering, evergreen, wearied account of how conmen gain power in plain sight and erode entire societies in their wake: spooky ghost story shit.
–No. By the way, whatever happened to your mother?
–She died –I said. […] –I thought you would’ve known.
–How would I have known? It’s been years since I’ve known anything.
–Then how’d you find me?
–…
NOT THE CHEEKY OMINOUS DOT DOT DOTS!!!!
Juan finally starts to figure some shit out about his situation.
»Are you alive, Damiana? Tell me Damiana!
And shit gets haunted.
Suddenly, I found myself alone in those empty streets. The windows of the houses open to the heavens, twisted weeds poking out. The walls peeling back to reveal moldering adobe bricks.
–Damiana! – I yelled–. Damiana Cisneros!
The echo responsed: “… ana … neros! … ana … neros!”
Wanna think about one more spooky thing here? One way to interpret this scene is, after realizing he’s been talking to a ghost and findind himself alone, his cries reverberate through the deserted town, cementing his utter solitude – at least physically – in this purgatorial land. But also… earlier in this very section, Damiana described the ghosts as “echoes”. So who else is calling for Damiana?
tl;dr wtf happened in Pedro Páramo today
That guy’s name is Juan.
Remember way back in pages 5–7 when the first ghost Pedro ran into was a woman wearing a rebozo? This is probably her! This doesn’t really have any wild implications for the story or anything, it’s just cool that this came back. Now I feel a little less crazy for keeping such excessive notes in Obsidian.
