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The Ethiopian Exhibition

I had been living for seven years in California. Inexplicably I was unable to write. One day--it was April 1, 1987--I loaded my typewriter and some clothes onto my motorcycle and drove into Mexico. Crossing the northern deserts, my old Honda had five flat tires, a sure sign, I thought, that I was a fool to be making this journey; or else--such is the ambiguity of signs--that I was being punished for putting it off for so long. I arrived finally in Manzanillo, a seaport below Puerto Vallarta. I moved into an abandoned house in a coconut grove next to the ocean. I wrote daily, unexpectedly, in a cafe on the plaza. In three months the first draft of The Ethiopian Exhibition was complete.

Mexico has been good to me in its own peculiar way. It is a country cruel and beautiful, passive, violent, imitative and original. In a life spent obsessively wandering around the world, I had never before encountered a place I disliked so intensely, or found so fertile. When Ethiopia was finished I roved for a couple years east and west, north and south. Everywhere I went I found pieces of a new novel, which I called Maya. There were bits of it waiting for me in the Yucatan, in San Andres Tuxtla and Santiago Tuxtla, in Tlacotalpan and Uruapan, in Lagos de Moreno and Morelia. One night, in Xalapa, laid low by a recurrence of malaria, I saw Maya unreel before my eyes like a flickering kinescope. I was in the Hotel Limon, a monstrosity of tile where sounds echoed from wall to wall: whispers became roars, the dripping fountain a hailstorm. My malarial dreams were a cacophony too: they reverberated within my own skull. After Maya I retreated to Patzcuaro, a 400-year-old town in the mountains of Michoacan. Everything ran downward, blood from the slaughterhouse, sewage from the cluttering shacks, into the lake below. It seemed the natural place for The Queen of Las Vegas, my third Mexican novel. It rose out of the miasma like the regal whore she was.

Ethiopia was published by FC2, first as a stand-alone paperback, and then as part of Mexico Trilogy. It is available both at its publisher and at Amazon.com.

ON THE ETHIOPIAN PLAINS, night falls at six o'clock. It is impossible to say why this is so. Later we shall discuss this more completely. Examples shall be given. In each case the horizon reddens. Stars appear. The last baboon climbs into his cave. The first hyena emerges from his lair. The diurnal birds--all of them are gray--fall silent. The nocturnal birds begin to sing. These nocturnal birds are brilliantly plumaged, even ornate. Their voices differ from those of the daytime birds. The daytime songs are as harsh as the countryside. They can be heard everywhere, even in the cities. The nighttime songs are seldom heard near human habitation. They are oddly melodious. Such songs can rouse unease. There are stories about some of these songs, and their effects on humans, that may be called incredible. Some of these stories will be discussed. This book may be seen as a discussion of these stories. No one alive today, however, can vouch for them. Perhaps no one alive today has seen a nocturnal bird. They are known, nevertheless, to have iridescent feathers. The eyes of these birds are said to be black and expressionless. These birds are capable of gliding soundlessly for miles. These birds are predators. They are most iridescent when hungry. There are tales of glowing birds carrying off children. We believe these stories are true. Infants vanish during the night. In daylight there is wailing. People gnash their teeth.