No one is exempt from the future, so the question becomes- is it more tragic to know and not to be believed? Or to disbelieve until it’s too late?
Frankly, that seems to be more of a curse on those around Cassandra than on the woman herself. From the beginning of the story, both Rauli and the reader know the fate that awaits, a fate not unlike the Greek prophetess’s own: “I will clench my teeth, I’ve learned that in successive lives, to clench my teeth and take it.” Cassandra’s curse is that she can predict the future, but no one will believe her. The protagonist of Marcial Gala’s novel is Rauli Iriarte, a Cuban from Cienfuegos who is the reincarnation of the Trojan princess Cassandra.
But the distinctive beauty of Call Me Cassandra is that its nonlinear narrative echoes the narrator’s own fractured experience of time. And predictions of the future often sound ludicrous to three-dimensional ears.Ī reader cannot help but read through a novel in a linear fashion, though there are many fictions that play with nonlinear narrative, such as Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch and Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s The Big Green Tent. So, at its core, clairvoyance means participating in time in an impossible way. To three-dimensional beings, the idea of experiencing time though some sort of fourth-dimension would be just as ridiculous. To a two-dimensional being, experiencing the world in three-dimensions would be an absurdity. The ability to predict the future may be described as experiencing time in a non-linear, non-three-dimensional way. Believe that she knows the way.Ĭall Me Cassandra by Marcial Gala. Lyrical and gritty, heartbreaking and luminous, Rauli’s is the story of the inexorable pull of destiny.You know how the story is going to end, but it can only unfold if you take Cassandra’s hand and follow where she knows to go. Burdened with knowledge of tragedies yet to come, Rauli nonetheless strives to know himself. Moving between Rauli’s childhood and adolescence, between the Angolan battlefield, the Cuban city of Cienfuegos, and the shores of ancient Troy, Marcial Gala’s Call Me Cassandra tells of the search for identity amid the collapse of Cuba’s utopian dreams. And third, that he is the reincarnation of the Trojan princess Cassandra. Second, that he will die, aged eighteen, as a soldier in the Cuban intervention in Angola. Despite the signs that warn Rauli to repress and fear what he is, he knows three things to be true: First, that he was born in the wrong body.
He loves to read, especially Greek myths, but in Cuba in the 1970s, novels and gods can be dangerous. His older brother is violent his philandering father doesn’t understand him his intelligence and sensitivity do not endear him to the other children at school. Ten-year-old Rauli lives in a world that is often hostile.
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