by Maria Duenas
I figured he must be three or four years younger than myself; recently turned forty, no doubt, but no older than that. There were the unmistakable signs of gray streaks at his temples and small creases at the corners of his eyes, which did not in any way diminish his appeal. He was the son of a Chilean psychologist, he explained, and a trauma surgeon from Santander who had been living in the U.S. for a long while but with whom he didn’t seem to have much contact.
Luis Zarate clearly enjoyed talking, and I selfishly took advantage of the situation, giving him free rein. The less I had to explain about my own matters, the better. I was already familiar with his academic career, but discovered that he had been in Santa Cecilia only a couple of years and that his intention was to leave as soon as possible in pursuit of a position at some prestigious East Coast university. To my relief, after having spent more than half an hour chatting with him, I was convinced that this specialist in postmodern cultural studies couldn’t have cared less about the yellowing bits of paper belonging to an old professor who’d been dead for three decades. Thus I would be able to continue working at ease without having to give explanations to anyone.
I was already in the hallway, about to make my way back to the storeroom, when, as if not quite willing to let me go, he called me back from his office door.
“I think it would be a good idea to organize a little get-together to introduce you to the rest of our department colleagues.” He did not wait for my answer. “At noon on Thursday, for instance,” he added. “Next door in the conference room.”
Why not? It would do me good to climb out of my hole and socialize a little, I thought. It would also be a convenient way to put names to some of the faces I had been coming across in hallways and on campus.
The proposed lunch date finally rolled around. The conference room was quite large, with several windows, a bookcase full of old leather-bound books, and a collection of photos displayed on the wall. The university’s catering service had prepared a cold buffet of meats, cheeses, fruit, and salads. Hardly anyone sat down: we all served ourselves standing, chatting away in small groups that varied according to the flow of conversation.
The department chairman kept pulling me from one group of professors to the next. There were Americanized Hispanics, Hispanicized Americans. Chicano literature professors; experts on Vargas Llosa, Galdos, and Elena Poniatowska; specialists in comparative linguistics and Andalusian poetry as well as enthusiasts of all things mestizo or alternative. The great majority I knew by sight. Rebecca was also at the luncheon, participating in conversations while overseeing the event with a keen eye. Fanny, meanwhile, alone in a corner, feasted on roast beef and Diet Pepsi, absorbed in her own world as she chewed away industriously.
The lunch lasted exactly sixty minutes. At one o’clock sharp the diaspora took place, whereupon a couple of students dressed in blue and yellow—the university’s colors—began to clear out the leftovers. When almost everyone had gone, I was finally able to center my attention on a wall that was covered with photos.
Some were older, others more recent, individual and group photos, in color and black-and-white. The great majority commemorated institutional events; the conferring of diplomas, graduation speeches, conferences. I was in search of some familiar face among them when I noticed Rebecca approaching me.
“The history of your new home, Blanca,” she said with a trace of nostalgia.
She fell silent for a couple of seconds, then pointed to four different photos.
“And here you have him: Andres Fontana.”
A strong, energetic bearing. Dark eyes, intelligent beneath bushy eyebrows. An abundant head of curly hair combed back. A thick beard and a serious expression when he was apparently listening to someone. A man of flesh and blood despite the motionless images.
I was overwhelmed. With a pang in my stomach, I backed away from the wall.
I needed space, distance, air. For the first time since my arrival I decided to give myself a break.
Without even going back to the storeroom to turn off the lights, I wandered around Santa Cecilia, discovering places I’d never encountered before. Streets through which an isolated car or a solitary student on a bicycle appeared once in a while; deserted residential neighborhoods; remote areas I’d never set foot in, until my erratic steps took me to a unique spot: a large expanse of woodland, a mass of pine trees ascending a slope and disappearing into the horizon. By that time of the day, close to dusk, the effect was overwhelming. Though it lacked the drama of many picture-perfect sites that could be captured within the confines of a postcard, it possessed a rare atmosphere of solace and serenity.
I soon realized, however, that this piece of paradise was in imminent danger. An immense billboard full of photos of apparently happy faces and lettering a foot and a half high announced the area’s new fate: LUXURY SHOPPING CENTER. EXCITING SHOPPING, DINING AND ENTERTAINMENT, FAMILY FUN.
Nailed on sticks at the foot of the billboard like so many tiny Davids before a looming Goliath were several homemade placards repeating the word “NO.” No to the exciting shopping, no to the specialty stores, no to that type of family fun. I recalled seeing several editorials and letters in the university newspaper objecting to the construction of a new mall.
I moved away from the billboard and decided it was time to return home.
On my way back I stopped to buy something for dinner at Meli’s Market, which was on a side street off the main square. Despite the place’s apparent lack of pretense—rustic wooden floors, bare-brick walls, and the air of an old establishment out of a Western—its numerous delicacies and organic products labeled with elegant simplicity were evidence that it catered to sophisticated palates and deep pockets, not students and middle-income families with tight budgets that had to stretch to the end of the month.
With my arrival at Santa Cecilia, I’d left behind most of my old routines, including the large bimonthly shopping spree in a superstore with a deafening public-address system, discounts in the frozen sections, and three-for-two special offers. Like so many other things in my life, the shopping carts overflowing with part-skim milk and dozens of rolls of toilet paper had become a thing of the past.
Closing time was nearing and the last clients were hurriedly making their purchases. The employees, dressed in long black aprons, seemed anxious to put an end to the day’s work. In the cheese section I decided, without much thought, to go for a chunk of Parmesan. Then I added a can of dried tomatoes in olive oil to my basket along with a bag of arugula before heading to the bakery section, figuring there wouldn’t be much choice left. Suddenly I felt a tap on my left shoulder, little more than a grazing of two fingers and a slight pressure. In the middle of my absurd dilemma—a small round loaf of bread with bits of olive or a baguette topped with sesame seeds—I looked up, and to my surprise there stood Rebecca Cullen.
As we greeted each other, someone appeared behind her back. A tall, distinctive man with slightly long, grayish-blond hair and a beard that contrasted with his tan skin. He was holding a bottle of wine, and the reading glasses perched on his nose suggested that he’d been scrutinizing its label just a couple of seconds earlier.
“My friend Daniel Carter, an old professor from our department” was all Rebecca volunteered.
He offered me a large hand and I noticed he was wearing a sizable black digital watch on his right wrist, something I associated more with athletes than university types. I held my hand out and readied a greeting in English that I never uttered, a standard greeting I’d been repeating since my arrival: “How do you do, a pleasure meeting you.” But he took the lead. Surprisingly, disconcertingly, that athletic-looking American, almost juvenile despite his obvious maturity, took my hand in his while regarding me with blue eyes, and burst into flawless Spanish, throwing me completely off guard.
“Rebecca has spoken to me about your presence in Santa Cecilia, dear Blanca, of your mi
ssion to rescue the legacy of our old professor. I was looking forward to meeting you, as lovely ladies of regal Spanish lineage do not abound in these remote places.”
I couldn’t help laughing at the stilted flair in his parody of an old-fashioned gallant scene, as well as the hidden warmth behind his spontaneity—not to mention the soothing sensation, after weeks of obscure seclusion, of hearing an accent so familiar and impeccable in someone so alien to my universe.
“I’ve spent much of my life in your country,” he added, without letting go of my hand. “Great affections, wonderful Spanish friends, Andres Fontana among them. More than half a lifetime coming and going from here to there—great moments. What a place. I always go back—always.”
We hardly had the chance to continue talking: the shutters were being pulled down and the lights turned off; they were expected for dinner someplace, while an empty apartment awaited me. As we headed toward the cashiers and then outside, I was able to learn only that he was a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara who was enjoying a year’s sabbatical and that his friendship with Rebecca had temporarily brought him back to Santa Cecilia.
“I’m still not sure how long I’ll be here,” he concluded while holding the door to let us through. “I’m finishing a book and it’s good for me to keep away from daily distractions. Turn-of-the-century Spanish prose; I’m sure you’re familiar with the whole crew. We’ll see how it comes along.”
We said good-bye on the street with a vague promise of meeting up on some other occasion and took off in opposite directions as the first stars became visible.
On reaching my apartment I was again overwhelmed by that uncomfortable and hard-to-define feeling that I’d been dragging along like a deadweight ever since the department luncheon. I slept poorly that night, restless and preoccupied with Andres Fontana. Seeing a photo of the actual man, his face and his forceful presence, had somehow destroyed all my preconceived ideas, creating a new anxiety. Toward dawn my dreams were filled with vintage photographs among which I tried to identify a face as the images began dissolving and then disappeared.
• • •
I woke up thirsty and hot, my head throbbing. Daylight was advancing timidly. I threw open the window, seeking fresh air. Hardly any cars could be heard and only the silhouettes of a few joggers broke the stillness with their rhythmic pace. I grabbed a glass mechanically, turned on the faucet, and filled it. As the water ran down my throat, the previous day’s images came back to my mind. Then and only then did I understand.
I had approached my task from the wrong angle. After my self-imposed discipline of long hours locked up in the storeroom, struggling before a ton of old documents, something was still lacking. I had been dealing with Andres Fontana’s papers as if they were so many boxes of nuts and bolts, turning my task into a disrespectful invasion of a human being’s privacy.
Between the archival material and the conference room’s old snapshots I began to see something more than a tenuous common thread. The connection linking the legacy’s contents and the four images of the dead professor, whose name was all I knew at that point, grew sharp and powerful.
I could no longer confine myself to simply classifying the work Professor Fontana had left behind upon his death. My task had to be approached from a human stance, up close. I had to make an effort to grasp the person hidden behind the words—someone whose soul I had until then failed to seek out. Seeing those photos the day before made me realize that I had handled my new assignment with a coldness verging on hostility, as if I were dealing with a mere commercial product. Absorbed by my own miseries, forcing myself to work compulsively to evade my problems, I hardly bothered to take into account the human being hidden among the pages of his legacy: crouching between the lines, concealed within sentences, suspended amid the strokes of each word.
My job had suddenly become clear to me: to rescue and bring to life the buried legacy of a man who had been long ago forgotten.
Chapter 4
* * *
His father was a miner, basically illiterate. His mother served as a maid to a wealthy family and was able to string a few letters together and add and subtract with moderate speed. Her name was Simona and she had given birth to Andres at the age of thirty-seven, after more than fifteen years of infertility and the consecutive births of her first two daughters and a stillborn child who had been quickly buried and virtually forgotten. They lived in a village south of La Mancha in a dwelling known as a barrack, two small connecting rooms with dirt floors and no running water or electricity. The untimely arrival of that last child was received with little joy: another mouth to feed, a little less space. Simona had continued to work until the afternoon prior to delivery; the luster of her lady’s floor made no allowances for an aging maid’s pregnancies. The following day, mother and son were back at Doña Manolita’s house: she, mopping the patios and feeding the furnace with coal; the baby boy, wrapped in rags and tucked in a basket in a corner of the kitchen.
Doña Manolita must have been fifty-something at the time. A decade earlier she had been a rich spinster, partially lame and ugly, and had fallen for one of the workers from the oil mills that she’d inherited from her late father. And so Ramon, the swarthy young man with broad shoulders and a luminous smile who worked for her during the olive season, became Don Ramon Otero at the age of twenty-one as a result of the whimsical wish of his patroness. No one had foreseen such a fate for that handsome, quick-witted lad who each autumn fled his mountain village’s harsh winters along with his brothers in search of work as a seasonal laborer in other parts of the country. But Doña Manolita liked younger men, all the more so if they were vigorous, with an impudent stare and skin the color of a cinnamon stick. Winter nights were cold and she hadn’t the slightest intention of becoming the richest woman in the cemetery, so with the shamelessness of someone fully aware of her power, she made brazen advances to Ramon. First came the stares, afterwards the encounters, grazings, and lewd exchanges hidden behind seemingly trivial words. In less than three weeks they were frolicking on the three fluffy mattresses of her mahogany bed in their first carnal encounter, which turned out to be immensely gratifying to them both, although for different reasons. To her, because she had finally calmed her lust with the youth’s muscular body, which had been driving her crazy for weeks. To the young man, because never before in his miserable life had he known the intense pleasure provided by acts as simple as brushing one’s naked skin against cotton sheets, walking barefoot on a carpet, or submerging one’s weary body in a hot bath.
To the satisfaction of both parties the meetings lasted for months, although Ramon was convinced that such an incompatible relationship would be terminated once the season came to an end, and he’d have to return to his native soil. His prediction, however, quickly vanished one stormy night when he was immersed in Doña Manolita’s porcelain bathtub. As she was pouring pitchers of steaming water on his back, she proposed marriage. Since he was a clever kid and knew full well that hunger is the best sauce, he quickly assessed the benefits of the transaction: to become the dependent consort of a rich woman, no matter how withered and malformed she might look, was certainly more profitable than a wandering life of felling pine trees in his native mountains or harvesting and pressing olives on other people’s farms. He accepted her proposal swiftly.
The unexpected news caused an equal measure of rejoicing and envy among his brothers and fellow workers, and triggered unrelenting gossip in the village. But it didn’t bother the couple in the least. Doña Manolita had no need to explain her arrangements to anyone but herself, so after a short ceremony in the Church of the Assumption they became husband and wife without any reproaches for their twenty-three-year difference in age.
Besides her never having to sleep alone again and his never having to break his back working from dawn to dusk, two other things became evident before long, just as the neighbors had foretold. First was that t
hey did not have any offspring. And second was that the young husband—now Don Ramon—began to be unfaithful to his wife with any pretty girl that crossed his path, just as he had on the very first day of their engagement. Because of such realities, Doña Manolita adopted the approach of accepting in her house the presence of her maids’ children while barring any young lady eager to join her domestic staff. Of course, other people’s children never replaced those she was unable to have, just as the absence of women of legal age did not dissuade her horny husband from having dozens of extramarital adventures beyond their now common hearth.
The maid Simona’s son was baptized with the name Andres, that of the lady’s late father, who had bequeathed her a fortune along with a snub-nosed face and some other unattractive features. She was godmother to Andres and gave the child a Mother of Grace gold medal, which the infant’s father promptly sold that same afternoon to invest the profits in liquor. Perhaps Doña Manolita saw something special in that dark-complexioned child who a year later began to wander about the house on his own, or perhaps she was simply getting old; the fact is that she displayed a solicitude toward him that, without being remotely maternal, must have come close to the love of a bored and grumpy great-aunt who was nonetheless affectionate. With remarkable insensitivity to the miner family’s financial straits, the lady got in the habit of making expensive gifts that neither the boy nor his mother was able to appreciate for their true worth: velvet suits so that he could accompany her to noon Mass, a small pianola, a patent-leather-covered album for stamp collecting, and even a sailor’s cap that would have made him the laughingstock of his neighborhood.
It was of little use to Simona that on occasion her son donned those ostentatious garments while on a daily basis he wore rope-soled sandals and clothes full of patches—just as she found it useless that Doña Manolita insisted on teaching him to use silver cutlery at the table when in his poor home they all shared the same gruel, bringing the spoonfuls directly from the common pan to their mouths. Doña Manolita never did take care of the boy’s real needs, just as she never seemed to be conscious that each of the fancy things she ordered for him from the capital cost more than the weekly salary of both his parents. But Simona never said a word about her lady’s whimsical behavior or the cruel absurdity of her acts. She simply let her carry on and, at the end of each workday, usually around dusk, took her son by the hand; then, chilled to the bone and walking in silence amid the dampness, they returned to their miserable dwelling for the night.