Last Friday I was walking down Stoke Newington High Street when a building partially collapsed a few metres behind me. To be precise the parapet and cornicing of a building collapsed eighteen seconds after I walked past the scaffolding that was supposed to keep everything in place. One moment I’m minding my own business, listening to Gato Barbieri through noise-canceling headphones, and next I’m one more survivor of London’s Dickensian landlords and useless and corrupted Hackney Council. The eighteen seconds felt more like four or five at the moment but now I know they were eighteen seconds, because someone sent me this CCTV recording and I could count them myself1. I don’t know what to make of this non-tragedy really, what it means and all that — so far I haven’t had any insights or felt the need to rethink the way I live my life, in any major way. That said, this collapse has made me a bit nervous and I now walk looking up and avoiding scaffoldings like the plague2.
One thing I remember very clearly of the aftermath is what crossed my mind when I turned around, removed my headphones, and realised what had happened, how serious it was: “Right, so now we’ll have to drag bodies from the rubble…” I thought. Luckily no one got hurt, so there was no need to drag bodies out, and this — considering how busy this road normally is — feels like a miracle. Regrettably, I don’t believe in miracles, just in coincidences, and coincidences never lead to epiphanies.
All of this preamble to tell you that when I arrived at the office half an hour later on Friday there was an email waiting for me, from the lovely people at Rough Trade Books, who were kindly asking me to have a butchers3 at the proofs of a bilingual pamphlet we’ve been working on since last year. The name of said pamphlet is We Are But Nothing / No somos nada and it feels appropriate that the proofs arrived after I was almost crushed to death by falling debris, since the pamphlet deals exactly with that: death. I don’t want to say a lot about it lest I spoiled it for you (the pamphlet, not death), except that it takes place during a funeral in Rosario, Argentina4, and that it’s a dark comedy that explores the thin line that divides this from the other world — everything very coherent with the events that open this missive.
I thought for a while of renaming the pamphlet Eighteen Seconds but even if I’m shamelessly solipsistic I chose not to, as this would have made sense to no one but myself, and I owe it to the nice folk at Rough Trade Books to try to shift some pamphlets, so that they can pay my extortionate advance and royalties, which are higher than usual this time, since I wrote the story in English and translated it myself into Spanish (and if writers need not be paid for their work translators certainly do)5.
So here it is We Are But Nothing / No somos nada, Rough Trade Editions number 52, part of their Language Series, in all its funereal black and white glory. I hope that you bag yourself a copy and enjoy it. That said, I’d advise you against reading it while walking down the street. Especially Stoke Newington High Street. Especially when buildings are half-collapsing metres away from you. Especially if you care for this life.
Especially if you know this life is all there is and all there’ll ever be.
I’m the guy walking before the lads.
I wonder if the superstitious belief that walking under ladders brings bad luck originates in accidents of this kind…
“Have a butchers” = “take a look” in Cockney Rhyming Slang. It derives from “butcher’s hook,” which of course rhymes with “take a look”. See how well-acculturated I am?
The title of the pamphlet is verbatim a phrase uttered in funerals in Argentina, which means we are but nothing in the face of death — some hardcore Zen stuff, if you think about it. Impressive for a bunch of South American Catholics.
To make matters worse for them I’m my own agent, so that’s triple the usual cost.
I am going to go buy this "magical" and "realism" book now.
Curious: do you not believe in miracles due to Western religious connotations?
I ask because for me, knowing another word in another language, translates as "miracle" in English, so I continue to think of it as "unexplained phenomenon" (language of origin in my mind) and not miracle by God or god or Godot.
Unbelievable re that building! So glad everyone around remained well/ okay.