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Mofa
Mofa (which means 'mockery' in Spanish) has now been published as an e-book, available (for $2.95) at both Barnes and Noble (for the Nook) and Amazon (for the Kindle). You can also click here to see more of my books at my Author's Page at Amazon, and here for all my books available at Barnes and Noble.
Mofa was my second novel, begun in Costa Rica in about 1968 and finished in Riverside, California. It drew extensively on the year and a half I spent in Central America. It was my intention to write about sexual repression—to create a sense of strangled desire, truncated passion. After I wrote it, I sent it to a well-known agent. He sent me a two and a half page letter in response. "Books like this," he essentially told me, "should never be written, and if they are written, they should never be published." I never sent it anywhere else.
Mofa begins with a solitary traveler beaching his sailboat on an island (based roughly on Isla Mujeres) off the Yucatan coast of Mexico. He meets a wealthy American family—and is drawn into a morass of guilts and desires, both theirs and his own. The novel is fairly conventional in both structure and language (unlike most of my work). It was my intention to keep its surface understated, while beneath the unadorned language the repressed passions surged and roiled, affecting not so much the conscious mind but the unconscious. I wanted the reader to end up feeling uneasy, disturbed, without quite knowing why. Judging from the reaction of the agent, it seems to have succeeded.
Once a large bird whirred from the brush, only a few yards from him. Other birds laughed at him from the high branches. On the way back he found a tree, the biggest he had seen; it was being choked to death by creeping vines: green, broad-leaved parasites that crept up the trunk and over the foliage, shutting off the sunlight. They enclosed the tree in an envelope. A poisonous, almost violent smell hung in the air. The few tree leaves that were still in the sunlight trembled. The broad trunk clutched at the earth. The tree seemed to be gasping for breath, trying to lift itself beyond the hungry vines. Mosquitoes hung in furry clusters in the shady, cool places. Nearby a small muddy stream flowed listlessly in its own miniature canyon. Later that night he saw the tree again, in a dream. It had lungs like a man, heaving at the constricted air. Its face was ripped and bleeding. The sight of it, old and desperate and dying, brought John awake, but with a careful mental shrug he banished it, and the vision crumbled away into dust. Before morning he was back in his sailboat, in the chilly air, rounding the point of land which formed his cove.
Then he gestured at the rows of benches. "If you would select your seats, gentlemen?" At the other end of the room was a door. He crossed to it and peered out. Then he opened the door wide. "Gentlemen," he said, "for your edification and delight." Through the door came two women, the first rather old, the second still young. Both were naked, except the older one wore a black stocking on her right leg, and the younger one a black stocking on her left leg. Their features were very similar; they had large breasts, narrow waists, and fleshy hips. On the older woman the breasts sagged; the nipples were protuberant and wrinkled; her upper arms and thighs were flabby. Their groins were hairless, their feet clad in high heeled shoes. Their faces were so covered with white powder they seemed to be wearing masks: their only features were black eyes and red lips. The nails on their hands were painted a vivid burgundy. Ghost-like, without looking up, they came silently through the door, and as the door closed behind them the room filled with odors: following the women, trailing in their wake and then spreading from wall to wall, a heavy, musky perfume, so thick it made John's nostrils pinch, and beneath it, faintly perceived, acidic, sour sweat.
The room was softly lit. People danced in the center, and others sat in chairs and sofas. In one chair sat a short, fat, balding man, his face and head gleaming with sweat. On his lap sat a dark Indian girl. Her face was garishly made-up: brassy lips, dark smears around her eyes, red spots on her cheeks. She wore a faded, tight dress, the skirt pulled up over her hips. Cheap, pale nylons were bunched at the metal fasteners of her garter straps. One dirty white shoe dangled on a foot; the other lay on its side on the rug. The man had one hand resting on her thigh. Her panties were gone. One of the man's fingers scratched at her little bush of black hair. She laughed and drank, wiggling in his lap.
