by Maria Duenas
“I think I’m going to go for the mushroom risotto,” I declared, closing the menu. “It’s been ages since I’ve had rice.”
“Excellent choice.”
“I’ll let you try it. Well, and how is everything going?”
“Good, good, good . . .”
The department, his classes, my classes, some books, some places, this or that colleague—a thousand different matters filled our conversation in the faint candlelight and over glasses of wine.
Without even being aware of it, as we moved from the hummus-and-tapenade appetizer to a salad and then to the main dish, we glided from the professional terrain into a more human sphere of things. Neither of us went into detail or openly expressed emotions or feelings as I had the previous day. But we did drop a few facts that until then we’d never talked about before. Nothing intimate: objective matters, general subjects, except that they nevertheless crossed the line of the purely professional. That he had a little daughter in Massachusetts, although he had never married the mother. That I’d just separated somewhat abruptly. That his transfer to California had resulted in their relationship cooling down. That my children hardly needed me anymore. He did not mention Lisa Gersen, the young German professor I’d seen him with the night of the debate and on one other occasion, whom everyone in the department thought was special to him. Nor did I ask.
Someone came up to our table unexpectedly in the middle of our dinner. One of my students, Joe Super, the adorable historian in my conversation course. I hadn’t noticed him earlier because he was seated behind me.
I was happy to see him. So was Luis, with whom he shook hands.
“I only came to tell my dear and admired professor,” he said with great charm in more than passable Spanish, “that I will be unable to attend your class next Tuesday.”
“Well, we’ll miss you, Joe.”
And it was true. He was, without a doubt, one of the most participatory students, with a friendly manner and intelligent point of view.
“It’s likely that others won’t attend either,” he added.
“Again because of the Los Pinitos matter, I take it,” Luis stated before I had a chance to ask.
Joe Super was still actively involved in the platform opposed to the project. I remembered seeing him on television, and in our classes he occasionally alluded to the matter.
“That’s right. Another meeting this Tuesday in the auditorium. There’s very little time left for the deadline to legally appeal against the mall project, and we’re all a little nervous.”
“In that case you’re excused.”
“And if you care to know how things are coming along, you can attend too.”
“Thank you, Joe, but I think I’d better not. I’m only in Santa Cecilia in passing, as you are aware. In any case, you can tell me all about it afterwards.”
“I presume our mutual friend Dan Carter will also be there,” he said by way of good-bye. “I’m sure he’ll chew me out for missing the pretty visiting Spanish professor’s class.”
With a friendly wink he returned to his table, again leaving Luis and me alone. The tone and content of our previous conversation, however, had been altered.
“Your mutual friend Dan Carter,” he repeated, ironically raising his glass in the manner of a toast. “Once again the great intellectual rears his head.”
Dan. That was how I’d heard his old Santa Cecilia friends refer to him. Rebecca often did so too. But Luis Zarate, as I knew full well, wasn’t part of that circle.
“You won’t be attending?” I asked, finishing off my risotto. I preferred to ignore his comment.
“No, thank you. I don’t go in for that game,” he said after his last bite of pasta. “Delicious,” he concluded as he wiped his mouth. “In truth, all this business about Los Pinitos and its future is something I don’t care about one way or the other.”
I was shocked by his reaction but hid it as the young waitress took away our plates. My position was that of someone newly arrived in the community, totally ignorant of its matters. Nevertheless, I understood my colleagues’ reaction toward the idea of razing a natural spot to build yet another shopping mall. “But you live here; it must matter somewhat. Almost everyone is against it. The reasons are clear: your colleagues are mobilizing nonstop—”
“You see?” he said with a half smile. “That old fox Carter has already lured you to his camp. Another glass of wine to accompany the dessert?”
I didn’t refuse. Perhaps it was precisely that—the wine we were both drinking generously—that made me talk without beating around the bush.
“What bad vibes you two have, don’t you?”
“It isn’t as bad as that; it’s only a misunderstanding. Do you know that the first ones to plant vineyards in this California country were your compatriots, the Franciscan monks? They brought some vines from Spain because they needed wine to consecrate—”
“Don’t go off on a tangent, Luis. Tell me, once and for all: What’s the matter between the two of you? What type of misunderstanding are you talking about?”
“Academic, of course. And personal, I may add. But nothing really too deep. Let’s not dramatize. In fact, apart from the discussion in honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, I’ve only spoken face-to-face with him once, although that first encounter was even less memorable.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me about it?”
We spoke with familiarity. He no longer made an effort, as he did in the beginning, to come across as the perfect gentleman, the perfect boss, or the perfect colleague, courteous and warm. But we got along just fine like that. We were different kinds of creatures but shared certain values, and that always made for smooth communication between us. Even though he was three or four years younger than I, we belonged to the same generation and had moved about similar terrain. That was why I got along with both Daniel and him, and I was bothered by the fact that they spent their time throwing poison darts at each other. Now I wanted to know the reason for the animosity that, no matter who it came from, always ended up affecting me.
“What do you care, Blanca? Your stance is the most intelligent: at peace with everyone regardless of the particular disagreements between them. One day you dine with me, another you have breakfast with him . . .”
“How do you know about that?”
“Someone mentioned to me yesterday that they’d seen you leave the Sonoma Road Café together, that’s all. Santa Cecilia is a small town, what do you want me to say? In any case, it must be a great honor for you to have the great Daniel Carter eating out of your hand.”
“Easy there, Zarate . . .” I said, finally trying my cheesecake. “In any case, I don’t know what interest he could have in the Los Pinitos business beyond taking the side of his friends who oppose it.”
I knew what it was. We had talked about it at some point and he had dragged me with him to that protest on that stormy afternoon we had coffee. But I was unaware that his involvement went beyond signing petitions.
“Well, don’t doubt that he has enormous interest in the issue,” he said. “Toward the end of last year’s spring semester, Carter called me from his office in Santa Barbara to ask that I see him here in Santa Cecilia: he wanted to talk to me about something that he did not specify. I agreed to meet the following week. He walked in like he owned the place and, without even knowing me, came to tell me pretty much how I should run my department. Almost demanding that I act in a way that best served his interests.”
I couldn’t follow what he was saying. Perhaps it was the wine or the murkiness of the situation.
“It all had to do with the Los Pinitos project. He tried to convince me that the department should actively intervene with all its resources.”
“What resources?” I asked without letting him finish.
“I don’t know; I didn’t give him the chance to explain. I
don’t know if he expected the entire faculty to sign a manifesto, or that we mobilize our student body, or that we make donations to the cause . . . I refused to keep on listening to him before he even went into details. I was as indifferent toward that whole affair as I am today. But I could not accept that someone no longer associated with this university, no matter how famous he was outside of it, would come to coerce me. To tell me what to do and what not to do, and the position we should take on issues that have nothing to do with us.”
As Luis spoke, violent collisions began to occur in my head in a sequence I was unable to control:
Daniel and Fontana’s legacy, Fontana and Los Pinitos, Daniel and me, Fontana and me. The thing that Luis Zarate never knew about I began to suspect at that very instant. In seconds my memory descended to the grimy basement of Guevara Hall. Could those be the resources Daniel had referred to? Palpable resources, documentary, quantifiable, belonging to a department that never took them into account. Had he intended to get from Luis Zarate a commitment for the department itself to unearth Fontana’s legacy and put it at the disposal of the Los Pinitos cause? From the very beginning Daniel had had a hunch that there was some clue there that could derail the shopping mall project. What if, due to the chairman’s refusal to get involved, he’d sought his own method to bring it to light?
“So I refused,” Zarate went on. “Out of principle, por cojones, as you’d say in Spain, if you pardon my expression.”
I did not react to the convincing nature of his words; my mind was still trying to piece it all together. Documentary resources, perhaps solid evidence among the thousands of papers I’d been working with for three months. Something that might have to do with Daniel’s endless questions regarding my progress, my findings, regarding the elusive Mission Olvido that he often asked me about.
“That’s where the battle ended. I don’t think there’s much more to it. Although it was interesting,” he added ironically. “It’s not every day that one stands up to a living legend.”
Although my brain was still busy connecting the dots, my face must have betrayed my confusion. He noticed and did not miss the opportunity to enlighten me.
“Since you work in different fields, you may not be fully aware of the scope of the real Daniel Carter?”
“So tell me,” I replied, wanting to know right that minute.
“In this country’s academic Hispanic studies community—and believe me we are a few thousand—he is a heavyweight. He’s been the president of the powerful MLA, the Modern Language Association, and director of one of the most prestigious journals in our field, Literature and Criticism. Books of his, such as Literature, Life, and Exile and Keys to Twentieth-Century Spanish Fiction, are groundbreaking and have been used for years in Spanish departments all over the United States. His presence is valued like few others’ in conferences and conventions in our field; to open or close an academic event with a plenary lecture of his is a guarantee of success. A positive referral or a letter of recommendation with his signature can fuel the professional career of anyone who receives it.”
The profile of the man that started taking shape before my eyes began to annoy me as much as his attempt to use the resources of a department that for decades had been no longer his own.
“Your friend Daniel Carter, dear Blanca, is not a simple anonymous and charming professor with few responsibilities and lots of free time in the final stretch of his career. To this day he continues to be one of the figures with the greatest intellectual acuity and influence among the community of Hispanists.”
Those revelations only increased my surprise. However, I didn’t want Luis to notice it, and once more the cheesecake served as my cover.
“Besides,” he continued, “he’s got a reputation for being a charismatic fellow, with lots of friends and, according to what is said, with a somewhat peculiar past. It’s a shame I’ve been unable to figure him out. Unlike you, my relationship with him has from the very start been marked by a total lack of understanding.”
He finished off his tiramisu while I tried to piece together the puzzle before me. Then he spoke again.
“I don’t believe in those sacred cows who think they can cast their shadow as far as they wish, you know what I mean?”
I was about to reply, when Joe Super came back to our table to say good-bye. We smiled at him; he smiled back. He hadn’t altogether turned around when I finally began to speak.
“What is he really doing in Santa Cecilia, then?” I asked.
“Enjoying a sabbatical and writing a book. Or so he goes around saying.”
“Spanish literature at the turn of the century, that much I know. But why is he here right now?”
His answer was swift. “That is exactly what I wonder each time I see him.”
Chapter 32
* * *
I spent all day Sunday chewing on uncertainty. I did not see Daniel, nor did I call him, nor did anyone mention him to me because I hardly spoke to anyone the entire day. But he was still echoing uneasily in my mind ever since the conversation with Luis Zarate at Los Olivos.
I woke up early and wasn’t able to get back to sleep. I went to the campus pool when it was still practically empty, swam without strength or enthusiasm. Afterwards I bought a newspaper next to the main square and had a coffee I couldn’t finish. At noon I was unable to eat. My stomach seemed to have shrunk, but my mind kept churning away. What until then had seemed innocent and casual now came across as suspicious: the reason for his continued presence in a place he didn’t belong, his persistent interest in my work, his knowing things about me that I couldn’t recall sharing with him.
Rewinding the memory of the months that had elapsed since my arrival, I again pictured him in the extensive gallery of scenes and shared moments. I saw him walk leisurely down the campus pathways with a couple of books under his arm and his hands in his pockets, or jogging in the distance in sports clothes at dusk. I recalled the day we met at Meli’s Market and the afternoon he dragged me in what seemed a spontaneous manner to the center of the demonstration. That lunch when he kept nipping away at my chicken burrito in the cafeteria; the afternoon in which he spoke to me with affection about the Andres Fontana that he’d once known. His strong voice singing popular Mexican songs at my party; his arms pushing the wheelchair of his mentally absent friend and that speech of his that brought tears and laughter to those gathered, while he toasted to life and intoned a hymn to compassion. And even closer in time, his fingers on the nape of my neck after the unfinished breakfast, his intense attention to my stories about the Sonoma mission as we both sat on an old wooden bench. His mention of Fontana’s death alongside a nameless woman, his advice inside the car to close my open wounds. His hand on mine before leaving. Always relaxed, warm, close. Perhaps too much so.
At midafternoon I went out again. I walked by Rebecca’s house and again found everything closed and plunged in silence, since she had not yet returned. I then headed toward the library. Although it was Sunday, the library was packed with students. The heat was at full blast and most of the students were wearing short-sleeved shirts, some even in shorts and flip-flops.
I dug into a computer on the main floor in search of some references. How do you wish to make your search? the machine asked. I selected the option AUTHOR, then typed in the surname, followed by the name. The findings were immediately eye-popping: fourteen books of his, coauthorship of a bunch of others, dozens of articles in prestigious publications, a good handful of prefaces and annotated editions. Narrative, criticism, Ramon J. Sender, exile, voices, letters, analysis, nostalgia, views, identity, revision. All these words scattered in a nonrandom fashion among the titles of Daniel Carter’s impressive output.
After that I headed for the third floor, where the Spanish literature section was located. I took several volumes from the shelf, skimming over some pages, while others I read thoroughly. Luis Zarate hadn’t exagge
rated. This was the work of a highly competent academic, not a simple bored professor with nothing better to do than accompany a recently arrived colleague on a visit to Franciscan missions and drink stout in an Irish pub.
I dropped everything toward seven. It made no sense to keep on reading; I’d more than confirmed what I wished to know.
There was a still a lot of bustle in the library’s main central area when I made my way toward the exit: some students were just arriving, others were heading toward the computers, the majority looking for a table here or there to settle into. There were also those leaving, heading to the street, into the night, on their way back to their dorms or apartments, to normal life beyond the padded comfort of the carpets and the shelves crammed with books. Perhaps I should have left with them. Returned to my life, quit investigating.
But I didn’t.
At the last minute and with my coat on, I decided to go in search of something my intuition advanced as a possible window to the truth. In search of one more puzzle piece to join to the bunch that I’d already accumulated.
I asked for instructions at the counter. “Press from 1969? The local newspaper? Everything is microfilmed. One moment, please.” Minutes later I held in my hand the microfilm that I needed and seated myself before a powerful luminous screen that would enlarge the pages of a three-decades-old newspaper. Daniel had mentioned May 1969 in reference to Fontana’s accident; I couldn’t remember the exact date. Seven? Seventeen? Twenty-seven?
I began to go through the pages quickly. Until one particular front page of the Santa Cecilia Chronicle appeared.
* * *
USC PROFESSOR KILLED IN CAR ACCIDENT
Spanish Professor Andres Fontana, 56, chairman of the Modern Languages Department, was killed last night in a car crash . . . Aurora Carter, 32, wife of Associate Professor Daniel Carter, was killed as well . . .