COUNTRY OF ORIGINby Javier Fuentes
Demetrio, the protagonist of Javier Fuentes’ debut novel ‘Countries of Origin’, was 13 and traveling to Niagara Falls in New York when his uncle revealed why they couldn’t cross into Canada. “Then I understood that we were undocumented,” he recalls, “and that undocumented, we were different and limited.”
It was a terrifying realization, but Demetrio has since tried not to let his citizenship hold him back. When we meet him, he has made a name for himself as a pastry chef in New York and has blossomed into himself as a gay man in the George W. Bush years. Yet the shame of being ‘limited’ haunts him every day of his life. When he hears of an exciting opening to become chief pastry chef at the Four Seasons, he applies – only to find out “there’s something going on with my application.”
It’s not his first anger. He previously met with an immigration lawyer about how to legally settle in the United States and learned that the best thing to do was leave the country for 10 years and then apply for a work visa. “I was filled with anger and despair because I had fooled myself over the past few weeks into thinking that at some point the door would open, when in reality the door was closed the moment I entered the country,” he thinks after the meeting.
This sense of administrative finality is familiar to anyone whose life depends on a bureaucrat’s indifferent signature, and Demetrio has had enough. To avoid the risk of deportation, he says goodbye to his uncle, his only family, and returns to his country of origin, Spain. During the flight he befriends an attractive young man, Jacobo, who is very rich and also gay, but does not want his family.
With Jacobo’s extraordinary generosity and social connections, the door of opportunity Demetrio has been waiting for finally opens – but he doesn’t trust it. Demetrio had just ended a long-term relationship with a man in New York who wouldn’t stop cheating on him, and in Spain he finds the way Jacobo looks at other men disturbing. He also has deeper fears: in America he had to rely on an understanding boss who looked the other way, and in Spain he fears he will become complacent, dependent on a rich friend who pays for everything and who might one day get bored with him . Meanwhile, Jacobo hides in the present, completely unprepared for the tragedy Fuentes places before him.
The gift and burden of a social novel is to be both about and not about, striving to deal with a topical subject while also ensuring that the book’s world and characters feel real, not just as symbols in service of an idea. Fortunately, in Fuentes’ hands, the “over” of “Countries of Origin” – the brutality of borders – is seamlessly intertwined with the “not over” details that deepen and broaden Fuentes’ story: Demetrio’s love for his uncle, his loyalty to in the midst of promiscuity , his sensual delight in work as a pastry chef. “Countries of Origin” is full of these pleasures, the little “not-abouts” talented novelists who enjoy their more pragmatic goals. In one of the novel’s tenderest details, “stray dogs lazed in the shade, and as we passed by, Jacobo spoke to them in baby talk.” As a butcher shaves the meat off a ham, “the leg began to sweat and the bone underneath came out with the shine of a huge pearl.”
As the novel documents a life pushed into free fall, these moments of peace and wonder remind us that we’re not just here for an agenda, for politics, for the news. Existence is not just fear, regardless of one’s circumstances. Even the most desperate are given opportunities to step outside their rigid boundaries. In this way, “Countries of Origin” does what all memorable novels do: it leaves the reader’s world a little bigger, lighter, and more forgiving than before.
Patrick Nathan is the author of “Some Hell” and “Image Control”. His novel “The Future Was Color” will be published next year.
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN | By Javier Fuentes | 294 pp. | Pantheon | $27