The Magician of Vienna

by Pitol, Sergio; Henson, George; Bellatin, Mario

  I’ll follow the diary entries and reconcile them with my memory to the extent possible. During my two years as cultural attaché in Moscow I visited numerous Soviet cities, some very beautiful, others merely interesting, still others frightful, sometimes as a tourist, but as a rule giving lectures on Mexican literature, art, and history at universities or institutes where Spanish or Hispanic American literature was taught. Vilna in Lithuania, Lviv and Yalta in the Ukraine, Tbilisi in Georgia, Irkutsk in Siberia, Baku in Azerbaijan, Bukhara and Samarkand in Uzbekistan, and Leningrad, as Saint Petersburg was known then, in Russia. On closer look, the number was small, but significant. The day Enrique called me from Samarkand I was preparing a lecture for the University of Turkmenistan on The Mangy Parrot by José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, Mexico’s first novel, as is well known, and when I mentioned this to scholars of Hispanic American culture everyone without exception smiled derisively or make a joke; when I did so with my young friends they burst into laughter. There was no one who did not remark that Turkmenistan was the most backward Soviet republic of all, and that certainly Ashgabat would be little more than a village. To talk to the Turkmens or the Kyrgyz about Mexican literature was an absolute waste of time, they insisted. But when I asked if they had been there, they all answered no and that they would never go to that ghastly ass-end of nowhere, unless they were sent as punishment.

  Days after Enrique’s call I had an appointment at the Institute of Cultural Relations with Latin America where I was warmly welcomed; it was the institution that invited me to give lectures in Moscow and in the other cities of the Soviet Union. The director received me immediately; I was delivering to her some contracts from various Russian musicians who were part of an orchestra in Mexico and, in passing, I told her about the upcoming lecture that I was to give in Ashgabat; I was interested in knowing above all the level of Spanish that the students who would be listening to me had; I was asking because some Russian Hispano-Americanists had remarked that the Faculty of Letters or of Languages there was very recent. Should I prepare a very simple text so that the students understood me? The director paused, then responded that of course Muscovite academics were the best in the Soviet Union, as a result of the longstanding Hispanist tradition in Russia, whose teachers had more possibilities to travel and make contacts in Spain and Latin America, which is true, but which makes them at once proud and blind to everything that is not part of their surroundings; she paused again, asked an underling for coffee, vodka, an assortment of sweets, and some papers with which she proceeded to educate me: Ashgabat was a small city established five hundred years ago in a remote oasis in one of the most expansive deserts of Turkmenistan. The settlers there made a living from textiles, the best carpets in the Soviet Union come from there. Bukhara has usurped everything, but in Ashgabat they continue to make textiles, among the best in the world; she returned to her papers and continued her instruction, explaining that just fifty years earlier the Republic of Turkmenistan, whose capital is Ashgabat, had a ninety-nine percent illiteracy rate and that today it boasted a library of one million three hundred volumes, an academy of science, one of the most important desert institutes in the world, and numerous universities. An extraordinary leap. Still, following the Great Patriotic War, scarcely some thirty years, women existed to weave and give birth; now, however, in every hospital and laboratory doctors and chemists are a majority female. Turkmenistan has become immensely rich. A few years ago oil was discovered in the desert and now it is an emporium. They have harnessed water from the Aral Sea, which as you may know is fresh water, and a large part of the territory is a garden. Go, go see our miracles, and prepare a lecture as if you were going to read it in Moscow or Leningrad. While you’re in Ashgabat they’ll be celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the opera, the first in Turkmen. A world-renowned baritone will be coming from Australia to perform it. And don’t fail to purchase some carpets at the bazaar in the outskirts of the city, you won’t regret it, you’ll see.

  I left the institute rather incredulous, but enormously curious.

  The first phone call from Enrique came on a Thursday morning. That Friday I didn’t leave my apartment, I cut every phone call short, saying that I was awaiting important news from Mexico. In order to be at home all day, I informed the embassy that a pipe had burst in the bathroom and that I was waiting for a plumber. Until nightfall, nothing. I chastised myself for not having asked Enrique where he was staying in Tashkent, but it’s possible he didn’t know himself. He might be staying another night in Samarkand so he could leave by noon to be at the opening of the film festival in Tashkent. Much later, at three in the morning, the phone rang; my friend said a festive hello, as if it were a holiday; the first thing he asked was if he had awakened me or if I was already having breakfast.

  I answered that it was three in the morning; he hadn’t realized that there was a seven-hour time difference between Tashkent and Moscow. We spoke for almost an hour. We began to make plans to see each other. The film festival would last two weeks. I would then meet him in a place called Ashgabat, where I had a university engagement, a hop, skip, and a jump by plane from Tashkent. I would wait for him there and later we would visit on camelback those strange, rough, and little known routes, like those that Bruce Chatwin loved so much. We spoke by phone every day. We managed to nail down the day, time, flight number, hotel rooms, the day of my lecture, as well as the interpreter and guide who would accompany us. My plane would leave from one of Moscow’s airports on Thursday at five a.m. and would arrive at four in the afternoon due to the time change, and he would land a short time before, as there were fewer flights between the two cities.

  I arrived at the hotel on a rainy afternoon, exhausted, at the start of one of those migraines that leave me dazed when I wake up at such an early hour. I called Enrique’s room to tell him that I would be in the lobby in half an hour. I took a quick shower and changed clothes. We all went to the hotel café to have a drink, that is Sonia, my interpreter, Oleg, Enrique’s interpreter, two teachers, a young man and woman from the University of Ashgabat, and Enrique and myself. I felt very at ease amid the country’s exoticism. Sonia told us that a Swedish company had built the hotel. The spaces, a certain almost gay asceticism, and the Nordic furnishings accentuated a radical antagonism with the Stalinist architecture, especially that of the hotel. At first the teachers were intimidated; later, after a little vodka, we all began to talk nonstop and at the same time. I asked Enrique if he had seen any of the city yet, and he replied that after arriving at the hotel he had taken a stroll with Oleg, but very short because it soon began to drizzle. It reminded him of something Arabic, Ceuta perhaps, where he did his military service, but cleaner, with spaces that were more open and with more vegetation. He pointed to the large windows where the hotel’s palm trees were visible. “That garden,” he said, “I would never have been able to see it there.” And suddenly the gathering broke up. The teachers put themselves at our disposal, the interpreters had to report to their superiors at an office, and Enrique and I went up to our rooms to rest for a while.

  By nightfall the rain had stopped. The streets were lit up, inviting a stroll through the city. Lena and Oleg excused themselves because they needed to finish some work in one of the hotel’s offices. Oleg said goodbye because the next morning he was to fly to Tashkent, where he worked in a tourist office. Sonia would be the interpreter and guide for both of us. They suggested we walk through the city center, around the hotel, and they would have a table reserved for us half an hour later for dinner.

  We walked out onto a wide avenue. The air was warm. We began to walk at random. I have no idea what we talked about: about our mutual friends in Barcelona, about Enrique’s stay in Paris, where he rented a garret from Marguerite Duras, about my diplomatic life, about literature or about the film school in Barcelona where he was very active, about the Third World Film Festival in Tashkent, about his astonishment before Samarkand. In my entry from April 27 I wrote: “At night we
went out to walk around, and the delight of that oasis began to envelop me. The vegetation, the perfumed air that we breathed, the discrete oriental touches in the new architecture, the beauty of certain faces and certain bodies that passed in front of us. The moment arrived when I was walking in a state of ecstasy. The exuberance and rarity of flowers within an urban space reminded me of arriving in Nanking or Havana more than fifty years ago, comparable only to Ashgabat At about ten p.m. we asked a soldier on the street for a good restaurant. He gave us directions to the best. We were welcomed like princes. There was a wedding, and they had closed to the public. Perhaps the young men thought us guests. We ate, we drank, we were fêted by everyone. For two hours I experienced what fraternity still has to offer. There were no excesses or admiration of the foreigner or servile friendliness, only human warmth and, above all, joy. It was a pleasure to see young people dance, celebrating with their bodies the authentic rite of spring. At twelve or so I withdrew from the party and read a few pages of The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron, a journey through Afghanistan in the thirties: ‘The most beautiful and intelligent travel book, one must consider it a work of genius,’ according to Bruce Chatwin.”49

  From here on there are very few notes in my diary, and those that do exist are of no use: “It rained this afternoon, and I soaked my shoes,” or “it’s warm enough to sleep in pajamas,” or “I counted the beams in the ceiling, and there are twenty.” In my diary about Turkmenistan I recorded only a few interesting details, about the performance of the opera Aina which we saw the next day and about which I had totally forgotten. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Upon meeting Sonia at breakfast, the first thing out of her mouth was that by the end of the party Enrique had let down his guard, although not entirely; I was petrified, could he have revealed some vice or crime? “What do you mean? Let down his guard in what respect?” She told me that Oleg had had too much to drink and that before leaving he offered a toast to the bride and groom, like all guests do at weddings, but the alcohol and his tongue got the best of him; she said that Enrique, despite its greatness, refused to return to his country without getting to know this republic that had been transformed from a desert into a garden of Allah; since arriving in Tashkent the only thing that interested him was visiting Ashgabat and meeting its settlers. At the Third World Film Festival he was one of the guests of honor, not just any guest. “Oleg continued to explain to the bride and groom, their parents, to all the guests, a little about Enrique’s career, his international prizes, his golden laurel wreaths, in short, his fame. When the festival ended he asked that everyone respect his absolute anonymity, he insisted on being a common citizen so he could become acquainted with the city with fresh eyes. The applause was deafening, everyone stood for several minutes. Enrique didn’t know why they were applauding him, they embraced and kissed, because I couldn’t translate for him what Oleg was saying. If he wants to remain anonymous, we must respect that. I only told him that he was forever in our hearts. The city’s prefect, the bride’s uncle, said a few words of welcome to the guests, those from nearby and those who had traveled from far-off, and he corrected Oleg, saying that no garden here belongs to Allah but rather to the workers and peasants of Turkmenistan. In the end everyone wanted to toast Enrique, people waited in line to embrace him, some with tears in their eyes. At the time I was overwhelmed with emotion, but now, in the cold of day, I think Oleg was wrong, it was a lack of honesty, a bit of a canard. If someone wants to come here anonymously, it must be respected, it’s not a crime. As a result of what may seem like minute details some very unpleasant misunderstandings have arisen, do you not agree?”

  Just then Enrique walked up to our table, with huge bags under his eyes and a shriveled face.

  “Did they tell you how they brought me back last night? I thought I was dying. Tell me, Sonia, is it true or was it a drunken dream that a crowd carried me on their shoulders singing?”

  At the restaurant they greeted him warmly, a photographer ordered me to one side, they wanted to photograph him alone. Later a functionary from the Minister of Culture collected us to take us to that bazaar the director in Moscow recommended, which is held only one day of the week. An hour later, beneath a never-ending sky, an immense flatland spread out in the distance toward what looked like a cloud of fire. As we got closer we could see that it was the sun’s vibration on the colored rugs stretched out in the desert, thousands and thousands of carpets, tiny ones and some immense ones; we continued along long rows of camels on which the weavers from the interior of the country transport their products and we took it all in: the merchants, men and women alike, all dressed in regional costumes, a mixture of Arab and Mongolian, which we scarcely saw in Ashgabat. Turkmenistan profunda!50 Women walked amid the labyrinth of carpets, displaying their treasures, of which I can only recall pieces of silver of ancient appearance, dozens of long necklaces around their necks and thick bracelets from wrist to elbow, dancing as they moved, cambering their arms and singing the virtues and prices of their wares. The men, however, walked about speaking in hushed voices, as if they were praying, or muttering to themselves; suddenly an old man began to howl like a wolf, like a jackal. There were those who sold buckets of camel’s milk, others walked around with pots of mutton that were repulsive to sight and smell. The camels were lined up beside cisterns. Everyone was talking, shouting, singing, from the children to the most decrepit old people. Some customers bought wholesale, loading all shapes and sizes by the dozens onto large cargo trucks. I detest noise, crowds in department stores, foul odors, and yet I was ecstatic. The worlds of the cave and of refinement fostered in each other an energy and a harmony with nature that I had seldom seen.

  With Sonia’s help, I purchased three rugs, a large one and two medium ones, and I still have them in my house in Xalapa, I am looking at them as I write this, as perfectly preserved as when they left the loom in Turkmenistan. The functionary from the Ministry of Culture asked Enrique which rugs he liked most, and he told him that it was impossible for him to choose one from among so many marvelous ones, and then Sonia began to turn them over to determine how many knots they had and the quality of the threads with which they were sewn; she then chose two spectacular medium ones. The chauffeur picked them up along with mine and carried them to our vehicle. The functionary told Enrique that the trinkets were a gift from the people of Turkmenistan, so that when he was far away he would remember them, the Turkmens, who had the honor of having received him here.

  We returned to the city by a different road and stopped at an oasis, where we were invited to eat. On a restaurant terrace, beside a stream and enclosed by bushes laden with orchids, which came from who knows where, there were three or four large round tables. As soon as we sat down, there appeared a throng of guests, who appeared to be artists, functionaries, and academics. The two teachers of Latin American literature sat beside me; Enrique was seated between two women of unimaginable appearance. They were the two most important divas of the Turkmen opera. They were ageless, their makeup formed a mask, two precious china dolls dressed in national costumes of sumptuous silk. When they spoke, and they spoke a lot, it seemed as if they were singing, as if every word were a single monosyllable: they looked like birds and created an extravagant counterpoint of nightingales and ravens. My hosts, the professors, filled me in on who some of the guests were. The opera singers held the rank of empresses, capricious and powerful, despite the fact that the Turkmen opera enjoyed a relatively small audience in comparison with the Russian opera, they were more important socially, politically, and culturally for reasons of nationalism. At that moment, they continued, they are furious because the following day they’ll celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the national opera, Aina, the first sung in Turkmen. It will be a grand event, and they were expecting a renowned Australian or Italian singer, who was the special guest and was to sing the arias that made him famous. They’re uneasy because he should already be in Ashgabat today to rehearse with the orchestra of the national
opera.

  Shortly after, a group of photographers arrived with a rather flashy television crew, led by a young smiling Turkmen dressed in Italian clothes whom everyone greeted very cordially and for whom they made room at the table. He’s a film director, the best in the republic, they told me. The meal transformed into a kind of film set. Cameras were rolling everywhere, which paradoxically made the banquet more natural and happy; everyone smiled, struck their best poses and gestures, and the divas were magnificent in their expressions, motions, and movements. When tea had ended, they rose to a small podium adorned with garlands and sang a duet that reminded me of those from the Peking Opera, and when they finished a chilling trill, the throng rose to its feet, said goodbye without shaking hands, and everyone got into their vehicles. I headed toward Enrique, who had been at the opposite end of the table, but I couldn’t reach him, the movie director took him by one arm and Sonia by the other and placed him in his car. I arrived at the hotel around five in the afternoon, wrote a note saying that I was going to rest a while, but would be at the bar around nine to go out for a walk and dine outside the hotel. I drank a horrendous coffee like all those I had drunk in the hotel, waited for him and at eleven, realizing that he wasn’t going to arrive, left him another note at reception telling him that I would be in my room, that he should call me as soon as he arrived. I began to read a disturbing book on Gogol: The Sexual Labyrinth of Nikolai Gogol, by Simon Karlinsky, and took notes for my detective novel in which the Russian writer would be indispensable; at two a.m. I decided to sleep; I thought that they must not have given Enrique my card, or that he arrived too late to call. I fell asleep instantly, and I don’t know what time it was when the phone rang and a voice, Enrique’s, but rather battered, mumbled that he felt exhausted, that it would be better if we saw each other tomorrow.