by Maria Duenas
As soon as Andres turned six, however, the situation changed. He started attending one of the Ave Maria schools for the poor, and before long both he and his mother began to appreciate the most positive aspects of that tutelage: the privilege of reading. Simona was not an intelligent woman, but for decades she had observed how the rich lived and was smart enough to realize that, besides money and property, education and culture mattered in that milieu. This was why, when Doña Manolita began to furnish her son with children’s books that otherwise would have been out of his reach, Simona recognized that her lady was finally contributing something valuable.
By the age of fourteen, Andres had given up his schooling and was busy running errands for a local packaging company. His father insisted that it was time for him to go down into the mine: he could not conceive of any other occupation for his son except continuing in his footsteps. Simona, on the other hand, tried to postpone for as long as she could that sad fate she feared was inevitable. When he turned fifteen, Doña Manolita gave him The Treasure of Youth, an encyclopedia for youngsters that immediately became his only window to the larger world. For his sixteenth birthday he did not get anything because his godmother was on the verge of death. She passed away on Christmas Eve 1929, and her husband was, naturally, the beneficiary of her will.
To everyone’s surprise, however, she left a handwritten letter addressed to Simona and her son, and another one to a man named Eladio de la Mata. Without any gratuitous display of affection, in the first she stipulated a fixed income in the name of her godson, exclusively devoted to his education, the conditions of which were clearly spelled out. If he were to accept them, the youngster would move to Madrid, where he would live as a guest in the house of the caretaker of a building belonging to her on Calle Princesa. He would then have to prepare for the baccalaureate exam and, if he were to pass, enroll in the university, where he’d pursue the degree of his choice. Don Ramon Otero would take on all the expenses on account of his inheritance. If Andres never attended university, there would be no possible way of receiving compensation either in the form of hard cash or by any other means. The ironclad proposal left no room for interpretation other than getting the boy as far away as possible from the miserable future that awaited him extracting coal from the depths of a mine. The objective of the offer was, in the words of Doña Manolita, to turn the lad into what back then was referred to as a useful man.
That enlightened despotism left Andres and his mother full of hope and the father and husband extremely angry. Unable to decipher the meaning of such an unexpected stipulation, the miner cursed his foul luck while he damned the deceased lady without realizing that by behaving in such a manner he was only confirming her prediction. And thus, while continuing to heap insults upon both the lady and all her ancestors, he got so plastered that he ended up passing out in the middle of the street and two mining blasters from the North Well hauled him off home.
Simona disagreed with her husband and confronted him with the same energy with which she’d cleaned other people’s homes since childhood. But the miner Fontana remained obstinate, and each time his wife tried to make him understand the benefits of the situation, she received more blows than understanding. So she decided to do the smart thing instead. Without saying a word to anyone, on the last night of the year she put together a small bundle consisting of a change of clothes and half a loaf of bread with cheese, and waited. At three o’clock in the morning on New Year’s Day her husband once again returned home totally plastered. When she finally was able to put him to bed, she sat down on a wicker chair, moved closer to the charcoal brazier, and remained staring at the coals, absorbed in thought.
An hour later she woke up Andres and quietly ordered him to get dressed. Seized by the early-morning frost, they picked up their pace on their way to the station. Once there, Simona handed Andres the envelope with papers and money that she’d received from Don Ramon Otero and hugged him with all the force of her skinny body. And so, at 5:10 on the morning of January 1, 1930, Andres Fontana took the mail train to an alien world from which he would not return. He never saw his mother again.
Simona made her way back home wrapped in her black tattered shawl, carrying in her bosom all the grief of the world. But she didn’t shed a tear. There were none left in her sad, exhausted eyes.
Chapter 5
* * *
The Mediodia railway station of Madrid with its majestic wrought-iron structure dazzled the young Fontana. He was unaware that the station had also served as the staging point for the Spanish troops’ deployment to the African War or of the tumultuous welcoming of the toreador Joselito’s dead body ten years earlier in the Plaza de Talavera. But then, the young man was unaware of practically everything. For starters, he found it difficult to get out of that place full of steam, noise, and a swarm of people loaded with luggage who were moving hurriedly between platforms.
He wore a shabby corduroy suit and an old cap, and at the age of sixteen had already surpassed in shoulder width many a hardened man who on a daily basis descended into the mines in the village he’d left behind. In his left hand he carried the parcel that his mother had put together for him, now lighter without the bread and cheese he’d eaten on the train. His right hand in his pants pocket was clutching the envelope that Don Ramon Otero had given Simona the previous day, which contained the caretaker’s address, a little money for his initial expenses, and the letter that would clear his path to knowledge. The rest of the allowances would be duly given to him by Señora Antonia, the caretaker in whose house he would reside. How the money from Doña Manolita would get to that woman was not his place to know.
Following the brisk pace of the pedestrians, he finally managed to leave the station and penetrate the immense unknown city. There was plenty of sun, but it was bitterly cold. He pulled down his cap, raised his coat lapels, and took off without the slightest idea of where he was headed. Driven by his young legs and an equal measure of anxiety and euphoria, he soon found his way.
It took him three hours to reach his destination, not out of necessity, but rather because he kept stopping, amazed by the wonders displayed before his eyes: the grandeur of the buildings, the speed of automobiles, the opulence of storefronts, the elegance of women trotting along in their high heels on the brand-new sidewalks of the Gran Via. Finally, following the directions given to him by some passersby, he managed to reach number 47 Calle Princesa, located near a statue of Don Agustin de Argüelles, a nineteenth-century politician.
Señora Antonia turned out to be a smallish woman with a lilting voice, much younger than he had imagined, married to a militant construction worker of the then-illegal CNT (National Confederation of Labor) by the name of Marcelino. Their entire family consisted of two boys, Joaquin and Angelito, both under ten years old. The room that Andres was to share with them in the caretaker’s place was dark and rickety, with a twenty-five-watt bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and a few furnishings cowering near the flaking walls: a nickel-plated bed, a dilapidated closet, and a butcher block table that would serve as a desk. Its small window opened onto an interior patio, where Señora Antonia washed and hung the clothes, and which contained a few potted geraniums, a couple of canaries in their cages, and the primitive toilet that the family shared with a cabinetmaker neighbor. Daily personal washup took place at the kitchen sink; for hygiene of greater scope there was a zinc washtub.
In the following days Marcelino, who at the time was unemployed, devoted himself to showing Andres around the neighborhood to familiarize him with his new surroundings. In less than a week he had already introduced Andres to most of the neighbors; moreover, being a staunch anarchist and an indefatigable speaker, he readily updated Andres on recent historical events. Andres, however, fascinated by his immediate reality, didn’t much care. In fact, it would barely register on him toward the end of that month of January 1930 that when King Alfonso XIII accepted Prime Minister Primo de Rivera’s resignation, Ge
neral Berenguer was put in charge of forming a new government, and the people of Madrid—poor, ignorant, and more agitated than ever—demanded a radical change from their leaders.
Marcelino also accompanied Andres on his first visit to the Cardinal Cisneros Institute, where, according to Doña Manolita’s instructions, he would obtain the high school diploma that would in turn open the door to the university. His shortcomings in matters of education were still overwhelming at the time. Whatever he had stored in his head came from a few short years of rudimentary schooling, from reading books that his godmother had furnished capriciously, and from the Treasure of Youth encyclopedia that he’d passionately devoured in the previous few months. Thanks to the latter, he had amassed a little knowledge in a diverse and somewhat picturesque number of fields: world geography, applied technology, a little international folklore. He lacked, however, a systematic education in basic subjects such as mathematics, grammar, Latin, or French; he was ignorant of the most fundamental ethical and social concepts, and didn’t have the slightest notion about good study habits. Nonetheless, his situation was significantly better than average considering Spain’s dire educational predicament during the first decades of the twentieth century, when more than sixty percent of the population was illiterate, and teachers—scarce and often lacking proper training—received miserly salaries.
The system’s shortcomings didn’t bother Andres in the least on that cold morning when he walked down Calle de los Reyes in the company of Marcelino to cross the threshold of the Cardinal Cisneros Institute for the very first time. With the letter that Doña Manolita had left upon her death addressed to the director as a safe-conduct pass, they followed the school clerk with reverential silence as she led them down a wide corridor filled with winter light. Advancing with their laborers’ caps in hand, trying not to make noise with their footsteps, they became increasingly aware of the incongruity of their humble appearance in that erudite place.
They didn’t have to wait for long. A bony bald man came to fetch them from the bench where the school clerk had contemptuously directed them. They both rose as if triggered by a spring; the gentleman barely smiled in greeting. It was Don Eladio de la Mata himself.
He had them step into his office, which was littered with books, framed degrees, and portraits of other men, equally prominent, who had preceded him in the position. After reading the letter addressed to him by Doña Manolita, he listened attentively to the youth’s statement and with brief but cutting gestures prevented the talkative Marcelino from interrupting him several times to contribute his irrelevant observations. Next he asked Andres a few questions, which in his opinion the young man answered with a maturity and seriousness not in accordance with his origins and age.
In conclusion, with modulated diction and perfect clarity, Don Eladio explained the principles that Andres needed to follow if indeed he was inclined to complete his studies and enter the university. He spoke of trigonometry, declensions, and commitment; of poets, chemical formulas, and persistence; of equations, syntax, and integrity. The young man listened in rapture, absorbing the words one by one and mentally noting all the names and concepts. When he departed from that office half an hour later, both the director and he himself felt that the goal was attainable. Poor Marcelino, meanwhile, suspected that something fundamental eluded him in life.
They left the school in silence and wandered the nearby streets. Marcelino, in front, unusually quiet, advanced with long strides, his hands in his pockets, and Andres followed, picking up the pace, trying not to lose him while still savoring Don Eladio’s words. They entered a tavern next to the Mostenses market. Elbowing the crowd, they made their way up to the bar and Marcelino ordered two tumblers of cheap wine. As they drank wordlessly, enveloped by the din, Andres couldn’t figure out what was the matter with Marcelino, what the reason was for his uncharacteristic quietness. He soon found out. The anarchist bricklayer took the last gulp of his drink, set it down with a bang on the counter, wiped his mouth with his jacket sleeve, and, eyes fixed intently on the kid, asked him to teach him to read and write.
From that day onwards, a phase began in Andres’s life in which weeks and months melted into a confused mass of nonstop study locked up in his room. He slept the minimum and ate only when Señora Antonia forced him to, sharing the family’s stew or fried eggs. He made an effort to participate in their conversations, pay attention to the news that Marcelino brought back from the street, and laugh at the boys’ funny remarks. He’d try, but his mind was far away, ruminating on the Pythagorean theorem, considering the periodic table, reciting fragments of the Aeneid: At regina gravi iamdudum saucia cura . . .
His godmother’s monthly allowance enabled him to live without too many hardships. Besides providing him with the indispensable tools—pencils, pens, ink—it allowed him to treat himself to certain luxuries on his quest to further his newfound knowledge: an atlas of Spain and its provinces, a laminated set of diagrams of the human body, a small blackboard. He even made a present to his landlady, invited Marcelino to a tavern, and handed some spare change to the kids for them to buy a cone of roasted chickpeas or a lollypop from La Habana.
During the time it took him to complete high school, things happened around him that would change the history of his country for good—things that he, with his thirst for knowledge, would have hardly understood had it not been for Marcelino’s overflowing verbosity. Still eager in his resolve, the bricklayer was slowly learning to read and write near the brazier each night, immersed in his primer.
They celebrated their first Christmas together toasting with soda water and cheap wine to a happy and peaceful 1931. And although the year was not a calm one, they did regard as fortunate the changes that took place barely a few months later with the king’s exile and the arrival of the Second Republic.
On the twenty-third of May 1932 the son of the humble maid and the illiterate miner, neatly combed, wearing a tie and showing no apparent signs of nervousness, passed his pre-university entry exam with ease and before a foreboding tribunal. Doña Manolita would have been proud to see that her pupil had satisfactorily carried out her plan. From the house of Señora Consuelo, the sturdy Asturian who lived in the second-floor apartment on the right, a long-distance call was put through to give Simona the news. She took the call in Don Ramon Otero’s house: she was soaked with sweat from busily ironing her master’s shirts. Deeply moved and unable to utter a coherent word in the unfathomable distance of the telephone lines, the poor woman was only able to repeat again and again, “My son, my son, my son.”
Chapter 6
* * *
As stipulated in the will, the next step in Andres Fontana’s life was the university. In the early 1930s, the University of Madrid still lacked a common nucleus and had numerous buildings scattered throughout the capital, most of them quite old if not downright obsolete. The University City was still in its construction phase, immersed in a long process that had begun in 1927, driven by King Alfonso XIII’s goal of endowing it with a space similar to American ones, where integrated planning, functional architecture, and extensive areas devoted to sports and recreation would be a priority.
The birth of the Second Republic and Alfonso XIII’s sudden exile did not slow down the project—quite the contrary: it gathered momentum but was now forced to eliminate any inclination toward grandiosity and excess. When Andres began his first course, the humanities were taught in an old, ramshackle building on Calle San Bernardo.
The same perseverance with which he managed to succeed at his baccalaureate exam guided the young man in his university studies. He excelled to such an extent that in his third year, Professor Enrique Fernandez de la Hoz, lecturer in historical grammar, proposed that he be granted a fellowship to help teach the Spanish courses for foreigners that would take place the following semester. He accepted the offer without even weighing the full consequences of the commitment.
Spreading the Spanish lan
guage was one of the activities of the Board for the Expansion of Studies, with lecturers sent year after year to universities in a number of countries and courses organized for foreign students and professors. Andres’s affiliation with that program began in January 1935 and lasted until the end of March. He participated in conversation sessions, acted as a companion on visits and excursions, and attempted to solve any problems that arose among the group of American professors, from addressing language misunderstandings to finding a doctor at an ungodly hour to simply making the rounds of the most picturesque taverns in Madrid.
Andres was impressed by everything about those strangers. Their unflagging energy in capturing the simplest scenes with their modern cameras, be it a cat on a roof, a stone coat of arms, or an old woman in mourning selling eggs from a wicker basket hanging from her arm; the ease with which they spent money; the bright, almost thunderous colors of their clothes; those white-toothed smiles. Through them he learned to smoke his first filtered American cigarette and dance to the rhythm of swing with a Valkyrie from Detroit in the Hotel Palace’s ballroom. He was moved, along with them, by the Roman aqueduct in Segovia and Velazquez’s painting Las Meninas; he tasted the thick chocolate of La Mallorquina for the very first time; he taught the visitors typical expressions as well as how to drink wine out of an earthenware jug. Far from simply being a faithful guide for those three months, he also turned out to be of great help to those insatiable foreigners in practicing their Spanish once classes were concluded. He corrected their pronunciation of the letters j and z, clarified their subjunctives, proofread their essays, and, in short, made sure their stay turned out to be pleasant and fruitful.