Author's Note
There's two editions of this tome: the novel you hold in your hands, and a novella, catered for readers who prefer a more understated, economical style.
The novel's has a Flesch–Kincaid readability score between a 10th and 11th grade level. The novella's easier to read, at a 6th grade level.
This abridged version isn't less literary. The omissions and minimalist style may enhance the writing, but this is for you to discern.
If you feel at any point you would prefer to change gears, as the possessor of a copy of the novel, you're welcome to a free e-book of the novella, accessed at the below link, using the discount code ‘NOVELLA’:
http://www.dombillings.com/books/mandarine
Prologue: Gidelia
Gidelia‘s migration from Venezuela to the United States hadn’t been tortuous. Not like many attempting the mercilessly fraught journey from their neglected point of origin. To a more hopeful life of underclass, perilous employment. Performing menial, unwanted tasks, in the land of the big, northern neighbour.
In Venezuela, Gidelia’s family was modestly wealthy, yet in the context of the Venezuelan societal stratification, the average plebeian would’ve considered her family upper class, whatever Gidelia’s protestations to undermine where she occupied in the country’s pecking order with misguided claims to modesty.
She’d arrived eagerly first in New York City, residing in youth-filled dormitories she eventually found too crowded. She eventually resigned to the realisation, despite the exhilaration of the Big Apple, the way of life, trying to make do sustainably as an NYC resident was gruelling, even subsided by occasional payments from her father in Caracas.
She missed her family with deep pangs of soreness. An effervescent occasion was any Skype call in rapid-fire, piercingly excitable Spanish to her parents and siblings.
Opportunities had arisen to make a life within the US, which both her parents encouraged, due to the devolving situation in Venezuela. Even her parents were considering a secure means to flee, whether the unanticipated shame of seeking refugee status in neighbouring Colombia, or some other more lateral-minded avenue.
A close girlfriend from South Dakota that Gidelia had befriended from her New York hostelling experience shared a job opportunity within a meat processing plant. The plant was one of the the largest in the country, with the capacity to process and pack over a million head of livestock for retail consumption.
Gidelia’s resounding first reaction was a declarative negative, almost spiteful toward her friend for suggesting labour clearly beneath her.
Beside her own pride wounded by the implication of, to her mind, ‘demeaning work’, Gidelia’s resentment also grew out of an implicit sense her Dakotan friend ought know her well enough. Gidelia's social standing and qualifications placed her well above production line handling of freshly-slaughtered, bovine and porcine flesh.
Gidelia’s friend, Joanne was a native of the the prairies. Not un-pretty, a mildly lazy eye lending a bright-eyed, quiet, judgmental disposition, betraying her staunchly-conservative, Christian raising. Joanne had yet to lose her virginity, but had engaged in anal sex as a presumably permissible proxy, turning a blind eye to the etymology of the Scripture passage of the Lord’s smiting of the settlement of Sodom.
Gidelia’s family was ideologically opposed to Venezuela's Bolivarian government, the most socialist leaning in the Western Hemisphere following Cuba.
Her family was pro-business, considering the regime of Chávez and Maduro beyond corrupt, an unforgivable embarrassment to their nominal claims to support social programs for the poor.
The Bolivarian regime claimed antecedents to the liberator and father of independence for several South American states Simón Bolivar.
Gidelia’s family considered the Chávez-Maduro regime to be more akin to a kleptocracy. Likely profiteering from narcotics trafficking, additional to siphoning funds from the state-owned oil giant, PDVSA. Venezuela sat atop the largest oil field on the planet, albeit with properties of viscosity and other characteristics precluding cheap production and refining.
Gidelia’s father had been an indispensable engineer within PDVSA, but had become increasingly marginalised early in the Chávez presidency to an untenable point. This precipitated a nervous breakdown, bed-ridden for a year and a half. The family, in this time, had relied upon her mother’s wage as a receptionist for a consulting firm.
Her father eventually consolidated the wherewithal to resume a career as an energy market analyst, able to draw on leaks of information from PDVSA, and bureaucrats within relevant ministries.
His seething resentment toward the regime had never abated. His precarious nervous state had never brought him close to the brink of outward support for opposition political figures. He welcomed US overtures to topple the regime, though was mixed on the efficacy of the impact of sanctions upon the people.
A supporter of the US Republican Party from afar, Gidelia’s father had sent her on her way with a copy of Henry Kissinger’s Diplomacy, by the US diplomatic doyen, espousing his realpolitik worldview.
In any challenges from those who questioned how she could sympathise with sentiments toward an outlook which meddled in the sovereign affairs of her native continent in the past half-century - including Kissinger’s tenure of officialdom - her smug retort was to look at the state of her native Venezuela.
Teetering on the brink of a failed state, wracked by acute shortages of food and vital medical imports. Chronic rolling electricity shortages and suffocating debt, compounded by crushing US sanctions, hindering the importation of equipment parts to ameliorate the parlous state of the oil and electricity infrastructure.
Also hindered, was access to the international financial systems, precluding the inability to meaningfully raise new bonds.
Amid a master’s degree of international relations when she had arrived in New York to complete an exchange semester abroad, the decision not to return to her ailing homeland had been excruciating, not least because it implied a suspension of her studies.
Therefore, the indignity her friend had bestowed upon her, to imagine, amid a master’s degree, performing the work a robot would soon be able to accomplish, could be worthy of consideration as a means to make ends meet in the US, was an indefensible insult.
For Gidelia, to be among the working class, was an active choice to shun the capital class, to not be open to the spoils of enterprise.
She could readily admit, she could at the best of times be a princess, petulantly claiming the centre-of-attention and moral high ground. She believed herself to be very beautiful, a vestige of praise showered upon her from her father as a child; now compounded by her boyfriend stranded in Caracas, in spite of been a little plump, her assured arrogance on the topic belying an easy beauty.
Removed from her family and boyfriend, but for a video call, the realisation of returning home to a country cratering, becoming increasingly unsafe, had been the hardest to accept in her 25 years of life.
Her heated protestations were retarded by her father, depriving her of agency in her decision-making, declaring she must stay in America.
His remittances to her remained tenable. But over one call, he collapsed in tears. Removing himself from the call, Gidelia’s mother conceded the hard truth, even her father’s income may soon shrink measurably to even cover their own subsistence.
A crisis point they almost never could’ve foreseen, such were the precipitous declines in wealth in the country, due to the phenomenal rates of inflation, reaching four digits, eviscerating savings.
The implication was clear: Gidelia was well-advised to seek employment in America.
Now, Gidelia’s father appeared to be backsliding into a state of breakdown. His precarious state left his immune system susceptible,