All Roads Lead to Austen

by Amy Elizabeth Smith

  They exchanged guilty looks, and Lorena admitted, “I didn’t get much past the point when Emma talked Harriet out of marrying that farmer.” The others nodded ruefully.

  “So you did read scenes with Mr. Knightley. What did you think of him?” I probed.

  Another exchange of looks, and this time Alicia stepped up. “He was a dummy.”

  “Definitely,” Lorena seconded. “He was really thick.”

  “I didn’t like him.” Ana María shook her head, making the thumbs down unanimous. Ouch! Poor dull, respectable Mr. Knightley!

  “He was a dummy for wanting to be with Emma,” Alicia added, and I was reminded of the earlier conversation at Martín’s house where the sentiment was the same, Dorrie excepted. “I’m not in very far, but you can see where that’s going.”

  “Maybe he sees something in her we haven’t seen yet,” Lorena suggested.

  On that hopeful note I said, “Will you all send me an email when you do finish? I really want to know what you think of how things turn out!” I passed around a sheet and got their email addresses, giving them my own on slips of paper; back in Chile I’d run out of my snazzy official “Dr. Amy Elizabeth Smith” cards from the university.

  I invited the three of them out for dinner to thank them for their time, but they all had family waiting at home. We spent another twenty minutes in pleasant gossip then prepared to go our separate ways—but not before I got them to promise that they’d email me when they finished Emma.

  “Now that we’ve talked about the book, I am more curious about the ending,” Alicia assured me as we made our way out to the street. “This was fun!” The others agreed.

  “We’ll have to do book groups with our own students,” Ana María added as we exchanged hugs and promises to stay in touch. “Thank you for the inspiration!”

  I was happy to provide inspiration, but I wanted to do more than that. On the taxi ride home it dawned on me that a bit of cash could help that inspiration along and cover the price of some books for their students. But I knew I’d never get them to accept cash, so how could I manage this?

  The next morning I got my answer. Despite the fact that I would have done my Austen talk for free, the school was paying me for the event. Lili emailed to ask if I wanted the money in U.S. dollars or Paraguayan guaranís.

  “Neither,” I answered. “Sign it over to Ana María, Alicia, and Lorena.” That would cover some books—and chips and soda for their first meetings. A good book is its own reward, but I suspected that Paraguayan teenagers, just like Americans, would find a little extra inspiration in any event that included snacks.

  ***

  Once again, my time in a fascinating new country was rushing to a close. On the positive side, every passing day brought me closer to seeing Diego back in the United States, closer to the visit that would help us decide what we wanted out of our relationship. But I regretted not having more time to explore Paraguay, and I couldn’t leave without seeing the Jesuit missions.

  Beginning in the early seventeenth century, Jesuits established extensive missions on land now divided across Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. The Jesuits sheltered Guaraní Indians from Brazilian slave traders, educating them and teaching them trades. When other Spanish colonizers envied their economic success, the missions were attacked (with a nod from the Spanish crown, which expelled the Jesuits). By the 1770s any Guaraní who couldn’t escape were enslaved. The extensive ruins, those within Paraguay’s borders mostly falling within a hundred-mile radius, were now one of the country’s prime tourist attractions.

  I arranged for a two-day tour with an overnight hotel stay in between. The driver was a brusque, burly man named José, who spoke fluent Guaraní. But I couldn’t seem to retain a single word he tried to teach me, even the entertaining insult for Argentineans that means “bloated-pigskin-that’s-good-for-nothing” (could my experiences in country number six ever live up to all of this anti-Argentinean buildup?). We arrived at Jesús de Tavarangüe to find the employees had all gone off to lunch, leaving the site unguarded.

  “Let’s go in anyway,” José said with a shrug. “If they show up, we can pay.”

  A pair of adventurous young Germans had made the same call. They were teetering along the west wall of the ruined cathedral, completely roofless, with a three-story drop in either direction. “Idiotas,” José snorted, studying them for so long I got the nasty feeling he was hoping to see them fall.

  Daredevils aside, Jesús de Tavarangüe was breathtaking. A rural site, its isolation allows you to experience how that mission became the whole world to the generations of people who spent their lives there. Fields stretch for miles around the crumbling church structures. Just as in Antigua, Catherine Morland would have adored exploring the picturesque ruins. Where stained glass had once been located, beautiful vistas of the nearby countryside were now framed. Only traces of statuary and relief carvings had survived; stone faces, arms, sometimes torsos, softened by time and exposure to the elements, appeared randomly like spirits trapped in the walls of the church that had seen so much life and death pass through.

  Several hours later the same Germans appeared at our next stop, Trinidad del Paraná. Since a guard was on duty, they were scolded down from their balancing act before they could provide any entertainment à la “two dead young ladies” on the Cobb at Lyme Regis. The buildings that made up the compound of Trinidad del Paraná were more structurally intact, but the site had less luck avoiding encroaching modernity. Someone had decided that visitors to a richly historic religious site would like nothing better than to cap off their day with a few hours at an amusement park; build it next to the mission, and folks can use the same parking lot! Ferociously chipper Paraguayan polka music from the carousel (or maybe it was the food court) provided the jarring soundtrack for the entire visit.

  The tourist agency had assured me that José was knowledgeable about the Jesuit sites. He wasn’t. The only subject he showed any enthusiasm for was Guaraní, and when that hadn’t panned out, he brooded. He wasn’t a bad teacher, I assured him as we set off again in the car—I simply can’t learn new words unless I see them written down. By the time I’d left the States nearly a year earlier, I’d made so many Spanish flash cards that I organized them in a twenty-four-drawer tool shop unit intended for nuts and bolts and screws.

  Night finally rolled around. There’d been several hotels I could choose from through the agency. In keeping with my Morbid Tourism Theme in Paraguay, I’d selected the sprawling jungle complex outside of Encarnación that supposedly harbored escaped Nazi Josef Mengele for years. I didn’t ask which room he’d favored—that was going way too far—but I did insist on my own room when we discovered that the agency had booked José and me into the same one.

  The guide’s humor was no better the next morning. I couldn’t bear to spend one of my last Paraguayan days in silence, so I began scraping the bottom of the conversational barrel, asking what kinds of tourists he liked best (“They’re all the same to me”) and what roadkill he sees most often (“Dogs”). Jane Austen’s name produced a shrug, but he did perk up briefly when I asked him if he had pets.

  “When my dad died he left me three birds, four dogs, a hamster, and a monkey. Very nice birds. But the monkey, he played with his organ in front of my guests. Muy grosero, that monkey. Very rude. I got rid of him.”

  He punctuated this last sentence with a satisfied grunt. I pondered the monkey’s fate for a few moments, finally deciding that maybe silence was okay for a while. We visited two more missions, San Cosme y San Damian and San Ignacio, both beautiful and, fortunately, both with guides on duty to share details about their history and architecture (and no amusement parks in sight or sound).

  On the long drive back to Asunción, ready to give conversation one more try, I threw caution to the winds and broached politics.

  “This country used to be safe,
you know,” José gave me a hard stare before returning his eyes to the road. “We had order around here.” He didn’t have to add “when Stroessner was in power”—that was understood. “You could walk the streets. Now there are criminals everywhere. And all this talk about ‘human rights.’” He spat out the last phrase as if it were something filthy. “Democracy. It just doesn’t work.”

  “Don’t you think there’s room for something between dictatorship and too much freedom? Some kind of middle ground?” I asked.

  He eyed me again. “Maybe,” he shrugged, but his tone said, “Hell, no.” Two feet away from each other in the front seat of the car, dusk settling around us, we were worlds apart. José looked about my age, which would make his birth date 1964-ish. At that point Stroessner had been in power for ten years and would stay there for another twenty-five—most of José’s life. Could he really imagine a different system, especially if he had suffered no firsthand experience of what it took to maintain “order?” Maybe if his mother had been kidnapped and tortured the way Emilio’s had in Chile, he might feel differently about things.

  But order of a kind does have its advantages—just ask Austen. My students in the United States often skim past that very important paragraph at the end of Emma with the comment about Harriet returning to her place since “the intimacy between her and Emma must sink; their friendship must change into a calmer sort of goodwill.” Film adaptations gloss over this, implying that of course Emma and Harriet will remain chums. But that’s not what Austen herself tells us. Emma is Harriet’s superior; she can’t be her friend. She can’t hang around with the wife of a farmer, certainly not one dependent on her own husband. She just can’t.

  I’ve had various students over the years try to argue that the separation the book calls for has nothing to do with social class. Surely it’s something else—maybe Emma and Harriet will just be too busy to hang out? Or maybe they’re worried about those gypsies and don’t want to get caught too far away from home? We love to think of Austen as our contemporary, and in the United States, that means she’s not supposed to be a “snob.” Isn’t this what Emma has to learn?

  Actually, it’s not—and I never felt the message as sharply as I had in Paraguay. Emma learns that she’s got to read situations and people more carefully and that she should be kinder to her inferiors, like Harriet and Miss Bates. Cher in Clueless may learn that her buddies should be free to date stoners from the grassy knoll (especially ones willing to donate a bong to a good cause), but that’s 1995. In Regency England, Emma is near the top of the social order, and the only way for her to stay there is to stay there. Order has its advantages, but mostly for the people at the upper end or for those more afraid of change than they are of oppression.

  I didn’t debate José, because I wasn’t naïve enough to believe I understood a complex land like Paraguay after only a month’s stay. But I know that Martín or Dorrie could have taken him on. A cause dear to their hearts was Martín’s self-sustaining agricultural school, which I had visited before my reading groups. Instead of focusing on top-down order, they believed in bottom-up growth.

  “The point here isn’t to teach poor children how to farm. They’re not stupid—they already learn that from their families. What they don’t learn,” Martín had explained, “is how to make money at farming. Not just how to raise chickens, but how to make a profit from chickens. That’s what’s going to make the difference in the end.”

  Although I thought I’d confronted the classism of Emma head-on back in the States, its full implications didn’t sink in until I read the novel in Paraguay, with Paraguayans—until I could talk to a man like José and visit a school like Martín’s. Democracy means freedom, and freedom always means risks. But if you really want to combat crime, the progressive theory goes, you don’t need to call out the army, impose curfews, and shoot anybody who disagrees with you—just give more people a fighting chance to make ends meet. To be self-sufficient.

  The system under which Austen’s characters lived, with its lack of social mobility, doesn’t look so sinister when the people at the top are compassionate landowners like Emma and Mr. Knightley or Mr. Darcy and Lizzy, just as patriarchy doesn’t seem so bad when you’ve got kind, responsible brothers to care for you as Austen’s did for her, Cassandra, and their mother. It’s only when the people in power don’t hold up their end of the deal—like John and Fanny Dashwood—that it’s clear how dangerous it is to have so little control over your own fate.

  ***

  During the night before my last full day in Paraguay, back in the safety of Martín and Dorrie’s house, something disturbed my sleep. I heard a whining close to my ear. Then I felt the sting on my neck.

  As I’d toured the missions I’d coated up with bug spray. I’d soaked and stayed vigilant when, before breakfast, I explored the tangle of forest surrounding the alleged-Nazi-harboring hotel near Encarnación. When I’d visited Martín’s agricultural school, the same. Ditto for every time I set foot outside of the house. So of course, a mosquito had to bite me in the comfort of my own bed after I’d showered.

  I lay awake for hours. Now I was going to get Super Dengue. I was going to die thousands of miles from home after all, in some country no one from my immense family had ever set foot in. I’d never see my mom again. I wouldn’t get to apologize to her for making light of her fears as I was traveling or for lying about using a sun hat in Guatemala or for having that beer party in junior high and throwing all the cans over the neighbor’s fence. I’d never see my sister or my brothers or their kids or any of my friends, ever again. It would cost a lot to have my corpse shipped back. Why hadn’t I bought travel insurance?

  I fretted myself into a state of exhaustion and finally dropped back to sleep. When I awoke, the hideous panic of the wee hours had subsided. Okay, so a mosquito bit me. What were the chances, really, that lightening would strike me twice?

  “Don’t worry about it,” Martín and Dorrie reassured me. “There are dengue mosquitoes here, but they’re much more common in the countryside. You’ll be fine. And you’re going to love Buenos Aires!”

  Still, when I called my mother that afternoon to remind her I was heading to Argentina for my final Austen group, I made sure we had a nice long talk. And I thanked her for being so patient with me, so supportive of all the wacky ventures I’d embarked on over the years.

  I didn’t expect lightning to strike twice, but Emma never expected to wind up married to her own brother-in-law, either.

  In which the author hunts down Jane Austen readers on the streets of Buenos Aires, meets a proud Argentinean, visits boodles of bookstores, has an encounter with a tango dancer, learns a bit of embroidery, gets a snow surprise, and, finally, reads Emma with a bunch of lively, argumentative, cross-talking Argentineans.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Guatemala: “When Argentineans see lightning, what do they think is happening? They think it’s God, taking their picture.”

  Mexico: “How do Argentineans commit suicide? By jumping off their own big egos.”

  Ecuador: “Why don’t Argentineans use hot water in the shower? Because it makes the mirror fog over.”

  Chile: “You’re going to love Argentina! It’s only got one drawback—it’s full of Argentineans.”

  Paraguay: “How do you get rich overnight? Buy some Argentineans for what they’re really worth, then sell them for what they think they’re worth.”

  I arrived in country number six thoroughly prepped on what I should think about Argentineans. I’d heard it all in countries one through five from friends, acquaintances, and, in one case, a total stranger in an Internet café. Short version: they’re arrogant.

  Goodness knows I should have learned my lesson by now about making assumptions. But these weren’t my assumptions—they came from folks I’d met on the road, beginning with Luis back in Guatemala, the first (but not the last) to pass on an
“arrogant Argentinean” joke unsolicited. Leti from the Ecuador reading group, while warm and engaging, seemed pretty content with herself, but that was one person only. Secondhand stories should be treated with caution. Were the good people of Argentina getting Wickhamed by their fellow Latin Americans?

  Still, I had to hope that another stereotype about Argentineans would be true—that they’re voracious readers. I’d stepped off a plane in Buenos Aires without an Austen group arranged in advance and with no connections to set one up. I had a month; surely I could find people willing to join a book group in what’s widely considered the literary capital of South America. And if yet another stereotype proved true—that Argentineans adore arguing with each other—then offering up a literary evening, verbal sparring welcome, should be just the thing for making new friends.

  Back in Paraguay, Martín and Dorrie had recommended a building in Buenos Aires that rents apartments by the week. Anything they could afford would be pricey for me, but I couldn’t resist spending at least part of my visit there in Emma style, so I went for it. Located in a posh neighborhood a short walk from the Avenida 9 de Julio, one of the city’s main arteries, the building on Juncal was surrounded by chichi cafés and clothing stores with two or three tastefully arranged items per window—a sure sign that if you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it.

  When I arrived, the doorman ran a practiced eye over my rumpled, never-stylish-in-the-first-place clothing and exchanged a look with the building manager, a stiffly elegant woman with a distinctive accent, which turned out to be French. Great. A displaced Parisian, in a country famed for snobbery. She looked thrilled to see the likes of me, battered suitcases and all.

  “I know you’ll love the apartment.” She smiled tightly as she handed over the keys with the smug air of someone offering a much bigger Christmas present than the one they expect to get.

  Too bad she didn’t stick around to see what happened next. I rounded up all of the tasteful “accents” in the apartment and stashed them in a closet. From my overstuffed bags I pulled my purple Mexican fish blanket and various indigenous-patterned fabrics from Ecuador and Paraguay. Every beige surface in the place disappeared under riotous color. Then came my faithful entourage of traveling critters. Foremost was Señor Guapo the stuffed Chihuahua, the treasured gift from Diego. Next, the big-eyed owl statue, three wooden llamas, and the small copper Chilean alpaca. From Paraguay I’d brought a pudgy little family of clay birds that looked best roosting on the windowsill.