The Mule
It is September of 1938, the Spanish Civil War is winding down, and Juan Castro Pérez, corporal muleteer, is hunting for wild asparagus when he finds a stray mule. Castro is not an ideologue. He was drafted by the ‘Reds’ and changed sides. He is an uncultured ‘right-winger,’ the son of a sharecropper. Other soldiers, such as his old friend Churri fighting for the Republicans, or Lt. Estrella, a covert Socialist sympathizer, see Castro as living in blissful ignorance. But Castro knows what he wants; he wants to go home with this mule, which he names Valentina.
The Mule is a man’s journey from delusion to enlightenment, a story written with humor and delightful irony. Eslava Galán, an essayist and award-winning Spanish novelist, has a delicate touch, and a deceptively carefree style that allows him to sneak up and, very often, clobber the reader with a heartrending revelation. Translated in a perfect register, The Mule preserves the soldiers’ piquant slang, the ridiculously bombastic wartime propaganda, and the formal address of the times. You can almost hear the soldiers’ songs. Castro is a familiar character in Spanish letters; a simpleton ostensibly, he bungles through life lackadaisically, making egregious mistakes. But he has great hopes, aspirations, curiosity, and an innate down-to-earth wisdom that sets him apart. You know Castro’s world will change when our hero remembers the time he was herding goats and a zeppelin floated over his narrow landscape. No one thought him smart enough to deserve an answer, but Castro endeavored until he got it. Faced with class struggle and prejudice, or with his clumsy attempts at love, Castro still struggles, but, in the end, thanks to Eslava Galán’s talents, he has our respect and complete affection. When culling your bookshelf, you will keep this one.
