A Shortcut to Paradise

by Teresa Solana

“OK. So you want a secret room?”

  “And a witch? Will there be a witch?”

  “OK, I’ll include a witch…”

  “One that’s very frightening, right? With lots of warts.”

  “Yes, sir: a horrible witch… And we’ll give her a wart on the nose. What do you reckon?”

  An astonished Carmen had been tenderly admiring her husband for some time. She’d been right to send him off to the Translators’ House for a few days, even though she’d never got a clear idea about what really happened in that small Aragonese city. In fact, to begin with, when Ernest came back to Barcelona slightly early, he was quite ill. According to him, he’d got a cold and the dry climate of Tarazona hadn’t suited him. The fact was he’d come back in a frail state and Carmen hadn’t known what to do. Ernest complained his back hurt and used that excuse to justify his bad temper and low spirits.

  However, Ernest’s mood had changed a couple of weeks ago. He seemed enthused by the idea of writing a novel and was working on it non-stop. His computer was on fire. Had he had a fling with a translator in Tarazona? Was that why he’d come back early, his wife wondered. Perhaps he was burying himself in work because he felt guilty? After analysing his behaviour, Carmen concluded he’d not been philandering: he hadn’t given her flowers or been unusually affectionate. He was the same as normal, like he was before his accident, or even better. This new Ernest reminded Carmen of the Ernest she’d known ten years ago in the fiestas of Gràcia, when they were a couple of innocents without a care in the world. She fell in love with him straight away; he took slightly longer.

  Carmen impulsively approached him from behind and kissed him on the shoulder. Ernest had finished the draft of the first chapter that afternoon and had given it to his wife. Carmen was waiting for the kids to finish their snack and go and watch TV before starting on her reading. As it was Saturday and hot, she’d take them to the park later on and they’d leave Ernest in peace to get on with his writing. That evening they were expecting friends to come to dinner and had decided to order pizzas. There was no need to tidy the house and Carmen preferred reading to cooking.

  Things were also going well for Carmen and she was happy. One morning, when Ernest was in Tarazona, she bumped into Montse, her neighbour, on the staircase and confessed how much she hated her work and how she regretted seeing so little of her children. A couple of days later Montse offered her a free massage and a job as secretary at the Alternative Centre for Holistic Well-being. Although they all worked overtime, Montse told her, they were short-staffed. The partner who saw to the accounts had got a new boyfriend and had decided to call it a day. And although the state of the Centre’s finances didn’t warrant it, they needed someone to look after the paperwork and act as a receptionist. Montse couldn’t cope by herself. For the moment, they couldn’t pay more than she was earning at the lawyers’ office, but she’d be working two minutes from home and in a much more pleasant atmosphere. The place was certainly trendy: Montse and her partners sold short sessions of personal care at a cheap rate, using tarot, group therapies or yoga, and their female customers always left feeling good and smelling sweet. Carmen didn’t personally believe in all their outlandish activities, but she was soon infected by the positive vibes and recommended the place enthusiastically to all her friends.

  The kids had finished their snack. It was half-past five. Ernest was shut away in his study taking notes, lost to the world. As he had to translate books written by other people to earn his bread, he could only devote weekends and the odd moment in the evening to his own novel. He didn’t know how long it would take him to finish, but when he had, it would be a weight off his mind and he’d sleep soundly once more. For the moment, he was saving behind Carmen’s back in order to get the two grand together to repay Amadeu Cabestany and send him a letter of apology. That would close a stressful chapter in his life that, conversely, had served to show the stuff he was made of.

  The kids announced they wanted to watch cartoons on the TV and, for once, Carmen hadn’t said no. After putting the dishes in the sink, she picked up the first chapter of the novel and disappeared into the kitchen. She made herself a pot of the jasmine tea she’d been specially recommended at the Centre, sat down and started to read: “After his wife had left to take the children to school, Pau Gelabert sat down in his pyjamas at the formica kitchen table where they had eaten breakfast and decided to analyse the situation with a cool head.”

  28

  We were into the second half of July, and as there was nothing urgent that morning demanding my attention, I had got up late. Besides it was a Monday, a day that always invites inaction, and nobody was at home. Before dropping in at the Alternative Centre to prepare the afternoon’s anti-smoking therapy session, Montse had taken Arnau to summer school while I cleaned the kitchen and tidied the house. The girls were away at camp and wouldn’t be back until Wednesday, and peace reigned in our flat. It was horribly hot in Barcelona and everyone was talking about the terrible toll wrought by climate change, but in a couple of weeks we’d all jump in the car and be off to spend August in Roses. The twins had insisted we go there because they have friends there and even though Roses in the summer is not exactly a paradise of tranquillity and is also very hot, the prospect of fleeing Barcelona and parking our bums near a beach made the oppressive heat seem a little less so. Although I was still sweating, I felt in high spirits and was getting ready to have breakfast when the phone rang.

  “Eduard.” It was Borja, and he seemed rather excited. “Have you still got that copy of Marina Dolç’s novel you read?”

  “I suppose I must have if Montse hasn’t thrown it in the rubbish bin,” I replied, wondering what he was leading up to. “Don’t tell me you want to read it! It’s really bad…”

  “Bring it to the office,” he replied drily. “Make sure you don’t forget. I’ll expect you at twelve.” And then he hung up.

  I was intrigued by my brother’s laconic call, but, as Borja sometimes does that kind of thing, I took it philosophically. It was still only half-past ten, so I had time enough to enjoy a leisurely breakfast and shower. Once I was dressed, cleaned and combed, I searched for the novel, which was in the dining room, half hidden on a shelf, on top of a book of short stories. I put it in a bag and ran to catch the bus that would take me to the office. I was there by a quarter to twelve. So was Borja.

  Thanks to the rather steep fees we’d charged after solving that case, which Clàudia had settled to the last nought without the least protest, my brother had decided to buy an expensive, powerful electric fan we were now trying out for the first time. Although we were about to shut up shop and go on holiday, we still thought we’d get our money’s worth from that gadget this year given that summer extends into October. Of course, we had an air-conditioning contraption in the office, but it didn’t work, like the radiators. It was yet another decorative detail, like the fake mahogany doors that supposedly led to our offices, which only hid a stretch of wall. I was all sweaty, and I greeted my brother and let the breeze from the fan blow away the sweat dripping down my cheeks, then handed him the bag and asked why he’d suddenly spawned an interest in Marina Dolç’s manuscript. My brother smiled and winked. Some crazy idea was buzzing around his head.

  Borja anxiously grabbed the bag and, the moment he took the manuscript out, the pages began to fly from his hands and flutter around the office. I’d forgotten to tie them up with the rubber band for trussing chickens, which I’d mislaid God knows where. The powerful fan did the rest, and in a few seconds the office was full of typed pages zooming in every direction. Borja was upset and clicked his tongue.

  “Fuck! What a disaster!”

  “It’s one hell of a fan.”

  “We’d better collect them up,” he said, switching it off. “I said I’d be there at one.”

  “At one? To do what exactly?”

  “To take the novel to the publishers. Apparently the other copies have disappeared. They’ve been thrown away or los
t. This copy,” he went on, referring to the pile of pages scattered over the floor, “is the only one left. The secretary at the publishers forgot to make a photocopy when she sent it to Clàudia for you to read. This is the original manuscript, in fact.”

  “You can’t be serious! The members of the jury all had their own copy…”

  “They’ve thrown them away. It’s what you’re supposed to do.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “The novel was typed, so there’s no diskette or anything,” he continued as he collected up the pages.

  “But now we have a slight problem, my lad,” I warned. “These pages aren’t numbered.”

  Borja stopped picking up pages and looked at me aghast. He’d turned pallid.

  “Fuck me…” he mumbled as he checked there wasn’t a numbered page anywhere. “How the hell will we?…”

  “Perhaps her niece in Sant Feliu has a copy,” I suggested.

  Borja shook his head.

  “No, I’ve asked her. Maite looked for a copy but she couldn’t find one anywhere. Obviously her aunt never bothered to make copies… So this” – there was a look of despair in his eyes – “is the only existing copy of what is reputed to be Marina Dolç’s masterpiece.”

  “So we’re well and truly in it!”

  We surveyed the scene. Five hundred unnumbered pages littered the room. Luckily the window was shut. There was no way we could fix this.

  “You’d better phone and tell them what’s happened. Perhaps with a little patience…”

  My brother shook his head.

  “The problem is the publishers are prepared to pay a reward to get their hands on this manuscript because they are desperate. Just imagine, a novel that’s cost them a hundred thousand euros and they don’t have a copy! They’ve offered me three thousand euros if I take it today.” He paused to ponder. “But if we take a pile of pages without any order to them…”

  “I don’t see a solution.”

  Borja looked at me in that way I’ve grown to dislike. I swallowed. I knew he’d just had an idea. Another crazy idea.

  “You’ve read it.” He was testing the waters.

  “Yes, but it’s twelve o’clock, and an hour’s no time. Forget it. Perhaps we could do it over a week, patiently… But I think even that would be tight.”

  “I’ll ring them and say I’ll be there at four, after lunch. I don’t want to upset them.”

  “Don’t you ever listen to me?” I insisted. “I told you in three hours I’ll only have made a start!”

  He smiled. His eyes were shining like when he was a young kid and up to no good.

  “You just watch.”

  Borja picked up a pile of pages and started to order them following a very curious method: the last lines of one page simply had to mesh – more or less – with the first of another, irrespective of any meaning. The fact the novel was a kind of monologue and not divided into chapters made it even more difficult to find the original order, but Borja simply got on with the job.

  “‘He passionately caressed… the trumpet she gave her nephew for Christmas?’ Borja, it doesn’t match up,” I remarked, not needing to exercise much critical insight. “And what about this? ‘She felt a searing pain… on the sleeve of the blue dress sewn by a Parisian seamstress?’”

  “No, that sounds fine. Don’t be silly!”

  I shrugged my shoulders. As I knew my protests would serve no purpose, I let him get on with it. In the end, we had half an hour to spare.

  “But no way is this the novel that Marina Dolç wrote!” I exclaimed. “Everybody will see that.”

  “I’m not so sure. Her publisher said he’d only skimmed over it, and I expect the jury members did the same. Besides, you heard the things the critics were saying at Mariona’s, the mental fog they live in… Let me do what a man has to do.”

  “I’m not sure… It’s supposed to be Marina Dolç’s posthumous magnum opus… I don’t think it’s ethical,” I declared as we left the office.

  “Bah, I’m sure the publishers will sort it out when they get round to editing it,” he responded knowingly as he bagged the pages. “Let’s stop soul-searching and go get the three thousand euros. After all, it is only a novel.”

  29

  The Spectator, Wednesday 20 September 2006

  REVIEWS

  OFF THE BEATEN TRACK

  Novel

  A Shortcut to Paradise

  Maria Campana (Marina Dolç)

  The Golden Apple Fiction Prize

  The Chameleon Press

  Barcelona 2006

  Agustí Planer

  When a writer we are accustomed to see selling astonishing seven-digit numbers of her industrially packaged novels to a mainly non-reading public surprises us with a work that must surely enter the literary canon alongside the great masters, this is a rare, if not unique, event. This is indubitably the case with A Shortcut to Paradise, the posthumous novel by Maria Campana, that many predict will turn the literary world topsy-turvy and occupy a place of honour in the annals of Catalan letters.

  The first thing the reader must ask himself when confronted by this difficult and dense novel is how is it possible that the author of conventional novels of such scant literary merit like The Rage of the Goddesses and Milk Chocolate, to mention only a couple, can be the same person who penned the bold and lucid reflections we discern in A Shortcut to Paradise. The answer doesn’t come easily. Maria Campana, better known as Marina Dolç, made her debut on the Catalan literary scene in 1993 and none of her previous novels anticipated the explosion of technique and will to experiment we discern in A Shortcut to Paradise. We don’t know how long she took to write it or even when she started, and her tragic death will possibly leave unanswered most of the questions academics will ask from now on. Nonetheless, it is to be hoped that this splendid novel will initiate a more attentive and subtle reading of her entire oeuvre, that may perhaps reveal aspects latent in her previous works that a superficial glance – or one informed by prejudice – unfortunately skipped over.

  Beneath the seemingly commercial title of this novel one detects the throbbing beat of one of the crucial works of twentieth-century human thought: Off The Beaten Track (Holzwege) by Martin Heidegger, that subtly provides us with the key to its interpretation. Maria Campana’s at once dazzling and opaque prose is a forest full of paths, leading nowhere in particular, that the writer wanders in an attempt to vanquish the anguish (Angst) generated by the consciousness of death. This journey, as the philosopher from Heidelberg wrote, is a necessary step in order to attain self-transcendence and leave behind the trivia of existence, the fall (Verfallen), in order to open our selves up to a “state of resolution” (Entschlossenheit) that climaxes when fear in the face of death felt by the novel’s main character – the countess of Catalan stock Lucrècia Berluschina de Castelgandolfo – transmutes into freedom in the face of death. The countess is Everyman, individuals with trivial lives heading towards an understanding of our being (Seinsverständnis) that ineluctably compels us to formulate the ontic question in relation to the nature of existence. Step by step, along the forest paths that Maria Campana treads with a prose that is at once poetic and disturbing, the novelist reminds us that that which is man’s, what Heidegger denominates as “being there”(Dasein), is not the mere fact of existing, but, as the philosopher suggests, the ontic possibility of being. We are in this world only as project (Entwurf) and are – and this is the great lesson one draws from the novel – what we come to be.

  Maria Campana, in her last novel, decided to eschew easy success and crude complicity with her readership and accepted the challenge of taking risks and placed her writing at the service of the quest for aesthetic endeavour with an evidently stylistic intent, a risk that few authors dare to run in this day and age. A Shortcut to Paradise, like all great novels, contains more poetry than prose, and that is not happenstance. Prose explains and analyses; poetry condenses and interrogates. All great literary figures have be
en great poets or have finally sought refuge in the stunning lyricism of verse to speak to us about the tragic awareness of our mortality. It is always affirmed that Catalonia is a land of poets, and the case of Maria Campana only confirms this truism once again. Between Parmenides’s opaque Poem and the disturbing prose of A Shortcut to Paradise there is the poetic, hope-filled thread that Theseus trails to avoid losing his way in the labyrinth of nauseous existence, the same thread traced by all the great works of Western literature, irrespective of literary genre. With the timeless wisdom of an Ariadne, Maria Campana accompanies us on these tortuous short cuts, off the beaten track, and confronts us with the irresolvable paradoxes of our human condition. The closing sentences of her novel sum up this epistemological and stylistic challenge and focus the reader on the transcendental ontic reflection: “When she bid farewell to her lover, the countess asked herself who she was, a swarm of insects and butterflies flying in every direction. Spring was definitively sprung, and the warm air wafting through the window made her drowsy and sank her into a state of intense melancholy. She decided to pour out a glass of champagne and, quite unawares, fell asleep and dreamed of a forest.”

  Epilogue

  When Oriol Sureda got up that morning at exactly eight o’clock, nervous but in an excellent mood, he decided he would go to the barbers for a trim. He was expecting an extremely important visitor that afternoon and wanted to look smart. He’d hardly closed his eyes the whole night, but had got up strangely infused with energy and couldn’t stop smiling. He felt as if he’d become reconciled with the world, he was hungry and ate breakfast without grumbling about the blandness of the biscuits or the watery nature of the decaffeinated coffee he was condemned to drink for the rest of his life. After breakfast, he took a shower and dressed while humming the Toast from the Traviata, in the same good mood he’d got up in and ignoring the jokes and gross insults from the other inmates.