All Roads Lead to Austen (7 page)

Libro
Sentimental
: The prison chaplain pays Caterina a surprise visit to hear her confession; moved by her piety, he assures her that true repentance will earn her a place in heaven where she can be a godmother to the many children called home early by their maker. She dies happily after all.

The house felt more like home after I set up the cozy little library of
fotonovelas
on the built-in bedroom shelves, one of every current title, along with a huge number of back issues I'd found at a secondhand store.

Diego finally returned that evening, filling the house back up with sunshine and dispelling any doubt about my decision to come to Mexico. I felt as comfortable and content with him as if we'd already lived together for months. Some men might be irked to come home and find an empty refrigerator and no food on the table, but Diego laughed out loud to see that I'd spent my day buying bargain reading material instead of groceries.

“Let's go out to eat,” he said, kissing the end of my nose.

My Spanish might be rough, but that man definitely understood me.

***

Puerto Vallarta was a quiet fishing village until the 1960s, when John Huston decided that Mismaloya, just north, would make a perfect setting for his film
Night
of
the
Iguana
. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton began their tempestuous relationship during the shooting. Dick bought Liz a house in Puerto Vallarta and then, more or less, tourists starting showing up. But while the population has expanded to about 250,000, the town center remains compact. There's a small central square, which often has free entertainment and dancing on the weekends, and close by is the town's loveliest church, Virgin of Guadalupe, with a huge lacey metal crown where you'd expect to find a steeple.

Directly across from the square, extending north and south along the shore is the Malecón, the attractive beach walkway where folks go to see and be seen. Soon after my arrival Diego and I went for a stroll and a swim so that I could reacquaint myself with the sea. After a leisurely day, we went to deliver
Sentido
y
Sensibilidad
to the first couple in the group. I was curious if
Sense
and
Sensibility
, less popular with U.S. students than
Pride
and
Prejudice
, would be more appealing to Mexicans.

On the bus ride there, Diego explained that he'd been friends since childhood with Salvador, whose wife Soledad was a perfect match for him. Both were sincere, hardworking, intelligent—and “
chiquititos
.” Very, very small. Then he squeezed my hand and said, “Their house is simple.” His emphasis gave me pause. Many of the houses I'd seen outside of the tourist center struck me as simple, so clearly he wanted to prepare me for a bit more. Was he afraid that I would be uncomfortable or that I'd make his friends uncomfortable? Or both?

Midway there we switched from bus to taxi, leaving behind the city's main traffic artery. The houses became smaller, the neighborhoods more ragged, and the terrain increasingly steeper. Diego pointed out a left turn to make but when the taxi driver saw the street, he balked and let us out. What used to be a road had disintegrated into dust, chunks of concrete, and stones from the local river. From there, we walked.

The small army of waiters and waitresses, taxi drivers, maids, clerks, and vendors who work in the tourist industry—that is where they live. Puerto Vallartans were around well before the crowds arrived in the wake of Taylor and Burton, but many local jobs now depend on tourism.
Septiembre
is jokingly dubbed “
sept-hambre
,”
hambre
meaning hunger, for the lean times between the summer and the high season beginning in November.

Salvador and Soledad's neighborhood wouldn't be appearing on the cover of any tourist brochures, but all of the people with whom we exchanged a
buenas
noches
as we passed looked at ease, lounging on plastic chairs in the dusty streets with friends and family, surrounded by miscellaneous dogs, enjoying the evening breeze and the music from competing stereos.

Salvador greeted us just outside the door, and as we entered, introduced Soledad. She was as warm and open as her husband and just as tiny.
Chiquititos
, the pair of them. Salvador was about five feet; Soledad, under. I often felt like a horse around Mexicans, and now I was a serious Clydesdale. I was happy to fold my bulk into the chair Salvador offered and stop towering impolitely over our hosts.

Their two even-tinier sons Juan and Salvador Jr. shimmied up to be admired then went off to play on a blanket spread over the concrete floor. On the kitchen wall I spotted several
cuizas
, bulgy-eyed pink lizards that look exactly like they're made of rubber. Salvador and Soledad's
cuizas
were even bigger than the ones living in my house. I almost pointed this out—then I realized they might not take it as the compliment I meant it to be.

After greetings, we worked our way around to Austen. “Tell them about the book,” Diego prompted, as he handed two copies to Soledad. Salvador was eyeing the size of them, and I thought of my friend Nora in Guatemala, snatching moments to read with such difficulty. Could these busy people find time for Austen?

“It's longer in Spanish” was the first thing I could think to say.

Laughing, Soledad exchanged glances with Salvador. “Almost four hundred pages,” he mused, thumbing through the book. “Soledad will help me.” He looked at her with pride. She had more formal education, having attended one of the many universities in Guadalajara for a year.

I didn't want to prejudice their reading, but I also didn't want them to feel at sea with an unfamiliar writer. So I told them a bit about Austen's life, cautioning them to have patience with
Sense
and
Sensibility
's opening chapters.

“Sorting out who's married to whom, who's related to whom, which are the sisters and half-brothers is frustrating for my students in the United States.”

“So it's like the Bible,” Salvador said. I must have looked confused because he clarified, “Like the genealogies in the Bible where you find out about the family lines. Then it gets easier after that.”

Not a comparison that had ever occurred to me before, but certainly apt.

Eventually the conversation turned from Austen. When Soledad asked about my education and I explained that I have a PhD, she and Salvador got a wary look in their eyes I'd seen before. At my university in California, at least once a week I bought a bacon and egg breakfast sandwich at the student union and gossiped with the person at the grill making it, usually a Mexican American named Luisa. One morning a student interrupted with a question, addressing me as “Dr. Smith.”

Luisa stopped, spatula poised, and gave me the same look that had just flashed across Salvador's and Soledad's faces. “You're a professor,” she blurted out, half accusingly.

“Yep,” I answered.

Her brow furrowed. “You've always been a professor here?”

“Yep. The whole six years you've known me,” I answered.

“I thought—” She examined me intently then gazed down at the grill. “I thought you
worked
here.”

I'd wandered off with my sandwich, equal parts proud and bemused—proud of being mistaken for a staff employee (translation: normal human being) but bemused at her newfound discomfort with me and her assumptions about what it means to “work.”

I didn't want any similar issues with this kind, earnest couple. I think Diego's warning about their house had been a warning not to judge, not to make assumptions about their capacities based on their living conditions. I didn't want any assumptions made about me either, that my education made me some kind of eyebrow-arching snob.

But as Austen delineates so clearly, you can't stop people from making assumptions if they're so inclined. You can only do your best to show your character through your actions and hope that other people will be capable of forming sound opinions. And if you're a realist like Austen, you'll also be wise enough to realize how many people aren't up to it.

As I fretted, suddenly wondering if
I
were making assumptions about
them
making assumptions, Soledad slipped into the back room then reappeared with a Ruth Rendell mystery and a historical romance by Jean Plaidy, both translated into Spanish.

With the wordless comprehension you see in a truly solid couple, Salvador took the books and handed them to me. “You could read these,” he said with a playful smile, “and we could also have a discussion about
them
.”

I looked for a way to decline without rejecting the spirit in which they were given, responding truthfully, “What I'm really interested in is reading Mexican novels. Which authors do you like? If you give me suggestions, I'll definitely read them.”

Soledad tilted her pretty head thoughtfully and said, “Rulfo, I think. Carlos Fuentes is more popular now, but I don't like his style so much. Juan Rulfo,
Pedro
Páramo
.” Salvador deferred to her, and they both smiled as I wrote down the names. Then we found our gazes shifting to the blanket on the floor where the boys were curled up against each other, sleeping soundly. Diego squeezed my hand and smiled. Time to go.

We each had our homework: Salvador and Soledad would read Austen, I would read Juan Rulfo. Equilibrium restored.

***

Puerto Vallarta has a number of nice bookstores, and working in them is the same mix of funky writer types and offbeat geeks you meet in bookstores across the world (I worked enough years in bookstores, pre-graduate school, to earn the right to say this). The largest one downtown, albeit tiny by U.S. megachain standards, was half a block inland from the Malecón, the city's lengthy boardwalk.

The tall, thin bookstore clerk nodded expressionlessly when I asked for Juan Rulfo and came up with three separate editions. He pulled them from completely different shelves, leaving me puzzled as to the organizing system.

“Have you read
Pedro
Páramo
?” I asked.

“Of course. It's important.” His Spanish was oddly flat in tone. “This edition has both of his only two books,
Pedro
Páramo
and
El
Llano
en
Llamas
” (
The
Plain
in
Flames
).

Published in 1955,
Pedro
Páramo
is one of the most famous novels written in Spanish and perhaps the best early example of Magical Realism. The plot is simple—Juan Preciado sets off to find his father, Pedro Páramo, but when he arrives in his father's hometown he's told Páramo is dead. A variety of odd characters share stories about his father, and the narrative slips seamlessly between past and present. But some of Rulfo's characters seemed to be not just memories but outright ghosts, hanging around people's windows at night, appearing and disappearing.

After pondering this for an evening, I decided to seek help. I headed back to the bookstore to see the thin, grim clerk rather than confess my difficulties to Soledad.

“Are some of the characters in this book ghosts?” I asked him.

He stared at me.

“I mean, are they dead already, some of them?”

“They're all dead,” he said flatly.

“Pedro Páramo's dead, I got that, but the people in the town? Are some of them dead when Juan shows up?”

“Juan's dead. They're all dead.” As I tried to think of a better way to ask for clarification, he repeated, “They're all dead.”

My head full of questions I couldn't articulate, creeped out by his hollow stare, I edged my way slowly toward the door. Once outside, I resisted the temptation to look back. No doubt there'd be nothing but boarded up windows and a big “for sale” sign.
Sí, there used to be a bookstore there, a long while back. Sad story, what happened to that young clerk. Qué lastima
.

I headed straight home and started
Pedro
Páramo
over from page one. Sure enough, just short of halfway through the book were references to Juan being in his coffin—which before I'd assumed was some kind of metaphor. He was in his coffin, talking to other people in their coffins.

Dang. Maybe I'd better stick to books with pictures.

***

Diego and I had a second Austen drop to make. He'd known Salvador and Soledad for years, but Josefa was a more recently acquired friend from his church. She and her husband Juan and their sixteen-year-old daughter Candela, the other half of the Austen group, lived in an attractive neighborhood well clear of the tourist areas and close to the encircling mountains. Downtown, the ocean dominated; there, the river rushed through noisily, giving the neighborhood a more inland tropical feel.

Josefa, a soft-spoken woman about my age, ushered us into her living room. She had a quiet, unassuming type of beauty, her face glowing without a hint of makeup, her thick dark hair arranged appealingly, without fuss. Her house, while larger and more luxurious than Salvador and Soledad's, still felt just as homey and welcoming.

With thanks and a gracious smile, Josefa accepted her fat copy of
Sentido
y
Sensibilidad
. “I'm really looking forward to discussing this book!” she said, looking pleased.

Candela, as lovely as her mother, looked not-so-pleased at the size of the volume. She brightened, however, when she saw Austen's name. “This author wrote
Pride
and
Prejudice
, right?” She and her mother, it turned out, had seen the film version with Keira Knightley. “I loved that movie! Is this book as good?” she asked, eyes hopeful.