DROWN

At 27, Junot Daz is New York's hottest young literary talent. Within three months of publishing his first story, he sold two more to the New Yorker and launched a fierce bidding war, landing a six-figure deal for his short-story collection, Drown, plus a prospective first novel. What's so exciting about Daz? Born in the Dominican Republic, he moved with his family to the United States at the age of seven, settling in New Jersey with other immigrant families next to "a six-lane highway and the dump". He loved reading but detested school, and got a place at Cornell University. His stories, harsh, lyrical and sprinkled with pungent Spanish obscenities, explore the theme of missing or abusive fathers. "I'd written an essay in school called 'My Father the Torturer', but the teacher ... thought I was kidding," says one character. However, this extract from "Negocios", the final story in the collection, shows a more compassionate view of Latino masculinity

My father, Ramn de las Casas, left Santo Domingo just before my fourth birthday. Papi had been planning to leave for months, hustling and borrowing from his friends, from anyone he could put the bite on. In the end it was just plain luck that got his visa processed when it did. The last of his luck on the Island, considering that Mami had recently discovered he was keeping with an overweight puta he had met while breaking up a fight on her street in Los Millonitos. Mami learned this from a friend of hers, a nurse and a neighbor of the puta. The nurse couldn't understand what Papi was doing loafing around her street when he was supposed to be on patrol.

The initial fights, with Mami throwing our silverware into wild orbits, lasted a week. After a fork pierced him in the cheek, Papi decided to move out, just until things cooled down. He took a small bag of clothes and broke out early in the morning. On his second night away from the house, with the puta asleep at his side, Papi had a dream that the money Mami's father had promised him was spiralling away in the wind like bright bright birds. The dream blew him out of bed like a gunshot. Are you OK? the puta asked and he shook his head. I think I have to go somewhere, he said. He borrowed a clean mustard-colored guayabera from a friend, put himself in a concho and paid our abuelo a visit.

Abuelo had his rocking chair in his usual place, out on the sidewalk where he could see everyone and everything. He had fashioned that chair as a thirtieth birthday present to himself and twice had to replace the wicker screens that his ass and shoulders had worn out. If you were to walk down to the Duarte you would see that type of chair for sale everywhere. It was November, the mangoes were thudding from the trees. Despite his dim eyesight, Abuelo saw Papi coming the moment he stepped onto Sumner Welles. Abuelo sighed, he'd had it up to his cojones with this spat. Papi hiked up his pants and squatted down next to the rocking chair.

I am here to talk to you about my life with your daughter, he said, removing his hat. I don't know what you've heard but I swear on my heart that none of it is true. All I want for your daughter and our children is to take them to the United States. I want a good life for them.

Abuelo searched his pockets for the cigarette he had just put away. The neighbors were gravitating towards the front of their houses to listen to all the exchange. What about this other woman? Abuelo said finally, unable to find the cigarette tucked behind his ear.

It's true I went to her house, but that was a mistake. I did nothing to shame you, viejo. I know it wasn't a smart thing to do, but I didn't know the woman would lie like she did.

Is that what you said to Virta?

Yes, but she won't listen. She cares too much about what she hears from her friends. If you don't think I can do anything for your daughter then I won't ask to borrow that money.

Abuelo spit the taste of car exhaust and street dust from his mouth. He might have spit four or five times. The sun could have set twice on his deliberations but with his eyes quitting, his farm in Azua now dust, and his familia in need, what could he really do?

Listen Ramn, he said, scratching his arm hairs. I believe you. But Virta, she hears the chisme on the street and you know how that is. Come home and be good to her. Don't yell. Don't hit the children. I'll tell her that you are leaving soon. That will help smooth things between the two of you.

Papi fetched his things from the puta's house and moved back in that night. Mami acted as if he were a troublesome visitor who had to be endured. She slept with the children and stayed out of the house as often as she could, visiting her relatives in other parts of the Capital. Many times Papi took hold of her arms and pushed her against the slumping walls of the house, thinking his touch would snap her from her brooding silence, but instead she slapped or kicked him. Why the hell do you do that? he demanded. Don't you know how soon I'm leaving?

Then go, she said.

You'll regret that.

She shrugged and said nothing else.

In a house as loud as ours, one woman's silence was a palpable thing. Papi slouched about for a month, taking us to Kung-Fu movies we couldn't understand and drilling into us how we'd miss him. He'd hover around Mami while she checked our hair for lice, wanting to be nearby the instant she cracked and begged him to stay.

One night Abuelo handed Papi a cigar box stuffed with cash. The bills were new and smelled of ginger. Here it is. Make your children proud.

You'll see. He kissed the viejo's cheek and the next day had himself a ticket for a flight leaving in three days. He held the ticket in front of Mami's eyes. Do you see this?

She nodded tiredly and took up his hands. In their room, she already had his clothes packed and mended.

She didn't kiss him when he left. Instead she sent each of the children over to him. Say good-bye to your father. Tell him that you want him back soon.

When he tried to embrace her she grabbed his upper arms, her fingers like pincers. You had best remember where this money came from, she said, the last words they exchanged face to face for five years.

He arrived in Miami at four in the morning in a roaring poorly-booked plane. He passed easily through customs, having brought nothing but some clothes, a towel, a bar of soap, a razor, his money, and a box of Chiclets in his pocket. The ticket to Miami had saved him money but he intended to continue on to Nueva York as soon as he could. Nueva York was the city of jobs, the city that had first called the Cubanos and their cigar industry, then the Bootstrap Puertoricans and now called him.

He had trouble finding his way out of the terminal. Everyone was speaking English and the signs were no help. He smoked half a pack of cigarettes while wandering around. When he finally exited the terminal, he rested his bag on the sidewalk and threw away the rest of the cigarettes. In the darkness he could see little of North America. A vast stretch of cars, distant palms and a highway that reminded him of the Maximo Gomez. The air was not as hot as home and the city was well-lit but he didn't feel as if he had crossed an ocean and a world. A cab driver in front of the terminal called to him in Spanish and threw his bag easily in the back seat of the cab. A new one, he said. The man was black, stooped, and strong.

You got family here?

Not really.

How about an address?

Nope, Papi said. I'm here on my own. I got two hands and a heart as strong as a rock.

Right, the taxi driver said. He toured Papi through the city, around Calle Ocho. Although the streets were empty and accordion gates stretched in front of storefronts Papi recognized the prosperity in the buildings and in the tall operative lamp posts. He indulged himself in the feeling that he was being shown his new digs to insure that they met with his approval. Find a place to sleep here, the driver advised. And first thing tomorrow get yourself a job.

I'm here to work.

Sure, said the driver. He dropped Papi off at a hotel and charged him five dollars for half an hour of service. Whatever you save on me will help you later. I hope you do well.

Papi offered the driver a tip but the driver was already pulling away, the dome atop his cab glowing, calling another fare. Shouldering his bag, Papi began to stroll, smelling the dust and the heat filtering up from the pressed rock of the streets. At first he considered saving money by sleeping outside on a bench but he was without guides and the inscrutability of the nearby signs unnerved him. What if there was a curfew? He knew that the slightest turn of fortune could dash him. How many before him had gotten this far only to get sent back for some stupid infraction? The sky was suddenly too high. He walked back the way he had come and went into the hotel, its spastic neon sign obtrusively jutting into the street. He had difficulty understanding the slender man at the desk, but finally the man wrote down the amount for a night's stay in block numbers. Room cuatro-cuatro, the man said. Papi had as much difficulty working the shower but finally was able to take a bath. It was the first bathroom he'd been in that hadn't curled the hair on his body. With the radio tuned in and incoherent, he trimmed his mustache. No photos exist of his mustache days but it is easily imagined. Within an hour he was asleep. He was twenty-four. He was strong. He didn't dream about his familia and wouldn't for many years. He dreamed instead about gold coins, like the ones that had been salvaged from the many wrecks about our Island, stacked high as sugarcane.

Even on his first disorienting morning, as an aged Latina snapped the sheets from the bed and emptied the one piece of scrap paper he'd thrown in the trash can, Papi pushed himself through the sit-ups and push-ups that kept him kicking ass until his forties.

You should try these, he told the Latina. They make work a lot easier.

If you had a job, she said, you wouldn't need exercise.

He stored the clothes he had worn the day before in his canvas shoulder bag and assembled a new outfit. He used his fingers and water to flatten out the worst of the wrinkles. During the years he'd lived with Mami, he'd washed and ironed his own clothes. These things were a man's job, he liked to say, proud of his own upkeep. Razor creases on his pants and resplendent white shirts were his trademarks. His generation had, after all, been weaned on the sartorial lunacy of the Jefe, who had owned just under ten thousand ties on the eve of his assassination. Dressed as he was, trim and serious, Papi looked foreign but not mojado.

That first day he chanced on a share in an apartment with three Guatemalans and his first job washing dishes at a Cuban sandwich shop. Once an old gringo diner of the hamburger and soda variety, the shop now filled with Oyemes and the aroma of lechn. Sandwich pressers clamped down methodically behind the front counter. The man reading the newspaper in the back told Papi he could start right away and gave him two white ankle-length aprons. Wash these every day, he said. We stay clean around here.

Two of Papi's apartment-mates were brothers, Stefan and Toms Hernandez. Stefan was older than Toms by twenty years. Both had families back home. Cataracts were slowly obscuring Stefan's eyes; the disease had cost him half a finger and his last job. He now swept floors and cleaned up vomit at the train station. This is a lot safer, he told my father. Working at a fabrica will kill you long before any tguere will. Stefan had a passion for the track and would read the forms, despite his brother's warnings that he was ruining what was left of his eyes, by bringing his face down to the type. The tip of his nose was often capped in ink.

Eulalio was the third apartment-mate. He had the largest room to himself and owned the rusted-out Duster that brought them to work every morning. He'd been in the States close to two years and when he met Papi he spoke to him in English. When Papi didn't answer, Eulalio switched to Spanish. You're going to have to practice if you expect to get anywhere. How much English do you know?

None, Papi said after a moment.

Eulalio shook his head. Papi met Eulalio last and liked him least.

Papi slept in the living room, first on a carpet whose fraying threads kept sticking to his shaved head, and then on a mattress he salvaged from a neighbor. He worked two long shifts a day at the shop and had two four- hour breaks in between. On one of the breaks he slept at home and on the other he would handwash his aprons in the shop's sink and then nap in the storage room while the aprons dried, amidst the towers of El Pico coffee cans and sacks of bread. Sometimes he read the Western dreadfuls he was fond of - he could read one in about an hour. If it was too hot or he was bored by his book, he walked the neighborhoods, amazed at streets unblocked by sewage and the orderliness of the cars and houses. He was impressed with the transplanted Latinas, who had been transformed by good diets and beauty products unimagined back home. They were beautiful but unfriendly women. He would touch a finger to his beret and stop, hoping to slip in a comment or two, but these women would walk right on by, grimacing.

He wasn't discouraged. He began joining Eulalio on his nightly jaunts to the bars. Papi would have gladly shared a drink with the Devil rather than go out alone. The Hernandez brothers weren't much for the outings; they were hoarders, though occasionally they cut loose, blinding themselves on tequila shots and beers. The brothers would stumble home late, stepping on Papi, howling about some morena who had spurned them to their faces.

He left Miami in the winter. He'd lost his job and gained a new one but neither paid enough and the cost of the living room floor was too great. Besides, Papi had figured out from a few calculations and from talking to the gringo downstairs (who now understood him) that Eulalio wasn't paying culo for rent. Which explained why he had so many fine clothes and didn't work nearly as much as the rest. When Papi showed the figures to the Hernandez brothers, written on the border of a newspaper, they were indifferent. He's the one with the car, they said, Stefan blinking at the numbers. Besides, who wants to start trouble here? We'll all be moving on anyway.

But this isn't right, Papi said. I'm living like a dog for this shit.

What can you do? Toms said. Life smacks everybody around.

We'll see about that.

There are two stories about what happened next, one from Papi, one from Mami: either Papi left peacefully with a suitcase filled with Eulalio's best clothes or he beat the man first, and then took a bus and the suitcase to Virginia.

His first year in Nueva York he lived in Washington Heights, in a roachy flat above what's now the Tres Marias restaurant. As soon as he secured his apartment and two jobs, one cleaning offices and the other washing dishes, he started writing home. In the first letter he folded four twenty- dollar bills. The trickles of money he sent back were not premeditated like those sent by his other friends, calculated from what he needed to survive; these were arbitrary sums that often left him broke and borrowing until the next payday.

The first year he worked nineteen-, twenty-hour days, seven days a week. Out in the cold he coughed, feeling as if his lungs were tearing open from the force of his exhales and in the kitchens the heat from the ovens sent pain corkscrewing into his head. He wrote home sporadically. Mami forgave him for what he had done and told him who else had left the barrio, via coffin or plane ticket. Papi's replies were scribbled on whatever he could find, usually the thin cardboard of tissue boxes or pages from the bill books at work. He was so tired from working that he misspelled almost everything and had to bite his lip to stay awake. He promised her and the children tickets soon. The pictures he received from Mami were shared with his friends at work and then forgotten in his wallet, lost between old lottery slips.

The weather was no good. He was sick often but was able to work through it and succeeded in saving up enough money to start looking for a wife to marry. It was the old routine, the oldest of the post-war maromas. Find a citizen, get married, wait, and then divorce her. The routine was well-practised and expensive and riddled with swindlers.

A friend of his at work put him in touch with a portly balding blanco named el General. They met at a bar. El General had to eat two plates of greasy onion rings before he talked business. Look here friend, el General said. You pay me fifty bills and I bring you a woman that's interested. Whatever the two of you decide is up to you. All I care is that I get paid and that the women I bring are for real. You get no refunds if you can't work something out with her.

Why the hell don't I just go out looking for myself?

Sure, you can do that. He patted vegetable oil on Papi's hand. But I'm the one who takes the risk of running into Immigration. If you don't mind that then you can go out looking anywhere you want.

Even to Papi fifty bucks wasn't exorbitant but he was reluctant to part with it. He had no problem buying rounds at the bar or picking up a new belt when the colors and the moment suited him but this was different. He didn't want to deal with any more change. Don't get me wrong: it wasn't that he was having fun. No, he'd been robbed twice already, his ribs beaten until they were bruised. He often drank too much and went home to his room, and there he'd fume, spinning, angry at the stupidity that had brought him to this freezing hell of a country, and angry at the blinkered existence his jobs and the City imposed on him. He never had time to sleep, let alone to go to a concert or the museums that filled entre sections of the newspapers. And the roaches. The roaches were so bold in his flat that turning on the lights did not startle them. They waved their three- inch antennae as if to say, Hey puto, turn that shit off. He spent five minutes stepping on their carapaced bodies and shaking them from his mattress before dropping into his cot and still the roaches crawled on him at night. No, he wasn't having fun but he also wasn't ready to begin bringing his family over. Getting legal would place his hand firmly on that first rung. He wasn't so sure he could face us so soon. He asked his friends, most of who were in worse financial shape than he was, for advice.

They assumed he was reluctant because of the money. Don't be a pendejo, hombre. Give the fulano his money and that's it. Maybe you make good, maybe you don't. That's the way it is. They built these barrios out of bad luck and you got to get used to that.

He met el General across from the Boricua Cafeteria and handed him the money. A day later the man gave him a name: Flor de Oro. That isn't her real name of course, el General assured Papi. I like to keep things historical.

They met at the Cafeteria. Each of them had an empanada and a glass of soda. Flor was business-like, about fifty. Her gray hair coiled in a bun on top of her head. She smoked while Papi talked, her hands speckled like the shell of an egg.

Are you Dominican? Papi asked.

No.

You must be Cuban then.

One thousand dollars and you'll be too busy being an American to care where I'm from.

That seems like a lot of money. Do you think once I become a citizen I could make money marrying people?

I don't know.

Papi threw two dollars down on the counter and stood.

How much then? How much do you have?

I work so much that sitting here is like having a week's vacation. Still I only have six hundred.

Find two hundred more and we got a deal.

Papi brought her the money the next day stuffed in a wrinkled paper bag and in return was given a pink receipt. When do we get started? he asked.

Next week. I have to start on the paper work right away.

He pinned the receipt over his bed and before he went to sleep, he checked behind it to be sure no roaches lurked. His friends were excited and the boss at the cleaning job took them out for drinks and appetizers in Harlem, where their Spanish drew more looks than their frumpy clothes. Their excitement was not his; he felt as if he'd moved too precipitously. A week later, Papi went to see the friend who had recommended el General.

I still haven't gotten a call, he explained. The friend was scrubbing down a counter.

You will. The friend didn't look up. A week later Papi lay in bed, drunk, alone, knowing full well that he'd been robbed.

! This is an edited extract from 'Drown' by Junot Diaz, to be published by Faber & Faber on 21 Oct. Copies of the book can be ordered direct by sending a cheque for pounds 7.99 (inc p&p) payable to Faber & Faber Ltd, 3 Queen Sq, London WC1N 3AU, or by credit card on 01279 417134. Allow 28 days.