Texas: The Great Theft by Carmen Boullosa

Author:Carmen Boullosa [Boullosa, Carmen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781941920015
Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing
Published: 2014-11-10T05:00:00+00:00

On the other side of the ocean he was known as Glavecke. When he arrived in Mexico he changed the vowels in his name around, taking advantage of the illegibility of his Austrian passport: Glevack. He’ll never open his Austrian passport again; when he arrived the Mexican authorities granted him the title of “rancher” along with three head of cattle, well-suited to the region, and a plot of land which he could use as he pleased in return for paying taxes.

He’s disappointed when he sees his “land.” It’s small and bone-dry, like a block of stone. He wanted to be like the men who owned property as far as the eye could see, like the ones he read about in a Bavarian newspaper, “We rode for five days to reach land that didn’t belong to our host.” Plus, there’s nothing appealing about it: there are no trees that will shed their leaves come winter only to bud again in the spring; there’s no running water; he doesn’t like dry grass. To sum it up, for him it’s like the sea: a solid, charmless, and luckless thing that is completely oblivious to mankind.

He likes riding, but he’d prefer a wagon drawn by oxen or something faster; it’s not the animal that appeals to him, just the movement, the travel, the adventure.

Glevack’s adventure becomes interesting when, one day, he sees the Comanches passing by with twelve captives whom they will ransom or sell. He offers the Comanches water—true, there was a well, but it didn’t make any difference to him, “There might as well not be any water”—just to start a conversation with them because he was curious about their business. He made friends with them and accompanied them to meet some bandits who hunted Mexicans along the highway—stealing everything they carried, torturing them to learn what property they owned, and killing them (they were quite meticulous, according to their story: with the information they obtained they took possession of the land belonging to the women they had recently widowed, it was a booming business).

Then he met Nepomuceno.

Every time he meets someone new, they make him an offer.

Among the captives there is a young woman who speaks a little German, she begs him to pay her ransom and free her from her captors, promising that her family will pay him double and “you’ll free me from the humiliation of living with these savages another day.”

After he sees the way Glevack treats her, the head of the bandits thinks he’s got potential. Plus, Glevack claims he’s a doctor, and a doctor is worth his weight in gold.

Nepomuceno, who’s his neighbor (he’s everyone’s neighbor, because he owns so much land you could ride for three weeks without stopping and still be on his land), proposes to manage his land and the few head of cattle he received (for a percentage of the profits) so Glevack can return to Matasánchez and enjoy city life.

Of the three offers, Nepomuceno’s is most interesting, but Glevack doesn’t decline any of them.

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