76 Books and arts The EconomistFebruary 10th 2018
F
RANCISCO CANTÚ signed up for the
United States Border Patrol hoping that
his experiences would “unlock” the puzzle
of the border. But policing the 2,000-mile
Mexican frontier, scanning mountain trails
for footprints and sniffing the air for rotten
corpses, left him only with more ques-
tions. “I don’t know how to put it into con-
text, I don’t know where I fit in it all,” he
confides one day to a fellow agent.
“Damn,” says the other patrolman. “That
shit is deep.”
Mr Cantú’s four years on the border
provide stories from this no-man’s-land
that mix compassion with quiet anger at
the cruelty of man and nature. It is wild,
untamed country where by night agents
douse cacti in hand sanitiser and set them
alight for the hell of it. But there is beauty in
the desolation. Satellites drift across the
clear, starry sky. Mr Cantú has an eye for
the flora and fauna of the desert, perhaps
because his mother—a second-generation
Mexican-American who disapproves of
his work—was a park ranger.
His time in the patrol exposes the futili-
ty of many of its rules. After discovering a
cache of drugs, Mr Cantú suggests follow-
ing the tracks of the traffickers. “Hell no,”
comes the reply of his supervisor. “Sus-
pects mean you have a smuggling case on
your hands, and that’s a hell of a lot of pa-
perwork.” Agents sit around smoking ciga-
rettes abandoned bymigrantsand urinate
on their discarded belongings.
Most ofthe migrants just want to work.
One asks to take out the rubbish atthe sta-
tion when he is arrested, just to show will-ing. A pair from Oaxaca share their packed
lunch of grasshoppers, dried fish and mez-
cal with the agents. The migrants are the
subjects ofthe many moral dilemmas of
the border. Making it harder to cross means
fewer people will risk their lives to do it;
agents slash bottles of water left out in the
desert for the desperate. Yet this contrib-
utes to unimaginable suffering. A man is
discovered curled up, almost dead after
drinking his own urine for four days.
The narcotraficantesare a constant, sin-
ister presence. Mr Cantú finds theirtrucks
in the desert and hears their shots ring out
across the border by night. Although El
Paso, in Texas, is one of America’s safest cit-
ies, its neighbour Juárez has one of the
highest murder rates in the world. Border
Patrol agents are shown images of the nar-
cos’ victims: beheaded, dismembered,
faces peeled from skulls. Fortifying the bor-
der has driven up smuggling fees, making
the businessmore attractive to organised
crime, which now runs it.Living so close to violence sends people
mad, Mr Cantú writes. He is referring to the
long-suffering citizens of Juárez. But as he
immerses himself in the horror of the bor-
der, his own sanity frays. A wolf stalks his
dreams. The focus gradually shifts from the
vastness of the desert to the claustropho-
bia of Mr Cantú’s troubled mind.
This is really a book about many bor-
ders. One is the line in the sand from the
Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico. Another is the
psychological divide that sees Americans
screen out the carnage occurring a stone’s
throw from their own country, “just as one
sets aside images from a nightmare in or-
der to move steadily through a new day”.
Finally it is about the divide between
the people patrolling the border and those
trying to cross it. For Mr Cantú, this wall is
broken down when an undocumented
friend is detained by the Border Patrol and
subjected to itscasual cruelties. His com-
pelling, tragic account may help to break
down the wall for others, too. 7A border patrolman’s lamentWalking the line
The Line Becomes a River.By Francisco
Cantú. Riverhead Books; 256 pages; $26.
Bodley Head; £14.99New American fictionStrike a pose
B
EFORE the High Line and the new
Whitney, the astronomical rents and
gastropubs, Chelsea was a playground
for queer misfits. The Christopher Street
Pier was where they gathered, sauntered
and made a quick buck. Diva elders
taught fresh-faced runaways the art of
turning a trick: how to spot the white
men cruising for a taste; how to kneel on
cement without cutting their knees; and,
mostimportant, how, in extremis, to “just
bite it”—after getting the money up front.
This is the New York of Joseph Cas-
sara’s vivid and engaging debut novel,
“The House ofImpossible Beauties”. It is
a city of hustlers and mad men, strip
clubs and graffiti, bigrats and bigger
dreams. Gritty yet glamorous, Manhattan
from the late 1970s to the early 1990s was
a rare place where “even the most outra-
geous people could have a home.”
That is what draws in Mr Cassara’s
characters, “little flaco Boricua” (ie, skin-
ny Puerto Rican) boys fleeing abusive
single mothers in Jersey and the Bronx to
become the perfumed women they were
always meant to be, with marquee-ready
names like Angel and Venus. But this is
also a city haunted by death, where
lifeless bums line the Bowery, murdered
“trannies” crop up in hotel rooms and a
mysterious virus terrorises gay men.In search of love and acceptance, Mr
Cassara’s Boricua castaways make
homes with new cherry-picked families,
live on rice and beans, learn how to sew,
and aspire one day to afford a Chanel suit
at Saks. They strut their stuff at drag balls
in Harlem, where dark-skinned queens
parade like peacocks. Jennie Livingston
chronicled this subculture in her ac-
claimed documentary “Paris is Burning”,
released in 1990. MrCassara takes some
of her real-life subjectsand imagines
their fleshed-out stories, mapping their
romances and addictions, their nightmar-
ish pasts and fantastical plans for the
future. For example, one “pre-op trans-
sexual woman” daydreams of being
whisked away by a rich, white husband
to a house in Westchester.
The novel feels like an anthropologi-
cal plunge into another era, enhanced by
rhythmic, urban prose littered with slang
and Spanglish. Some observations are
unsubtle and the metaphors are occa-
sionally overcooked. But these are forgiv-
able blipsin a book with the compassion
to capture the loneliness of a trans wom-
an with AIDSwho rides the subway at
rush hour to feel the warmth of “human
bodies all against her”, and the sensuous-
ness to convey the beauty of young gay
lovers mimicking Fred and Ginger on a
hot rooftop as the sun sets. The New York
of “The House ofImpossible Beauties”
may not warrant much nostalgia, but it is
a moving place to visit.The House of Impossible Beauties: A
Novel.By Joseph Cassara. Ecco; 416 pages;
$26.99. Oneworld Publications; £14.99