Authors: Andromeda Romano-Lax
I love collages. (Is it any wonder I found room in this novel for Picasso?) I like the look of bits of newspaper and cloth stuck with paint, and violins shaped from torn paper, and familiar items rendered unfamiliar. This book is such a collage. While I would direct readers to pay more attention to the final fictional design, here are some notes on my materials for the benefit of readers who, like Al-Cerraz, may be on a quest for unadulterated truth.
I started this book planning to write a nonfiction account about the Spanish cellist Pablo Casals. This was in late 2001, about a decade into my career as a freelance journalist and travel writer. Most recently I'd been struggling to find a new way to write about marine environmental issues, but was bogging down in jargon, burdened by the knowledge of a limited audience that was resistant to hearing more about obscure or intractable environmental problems. Even I wasn't sure whether I wanted to hear any more about environmental problems. Then, like many Americans, I was jostled awake by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which forced me to ask myself that clarifying doomsday question,
If I could do only one more thing with my life—if I could write about only one more thing—what would it be?
What I longed for that autumn was a chance to immerse myself in something beautiful and hopeful; and, for me, the sound of hope and humanity has always been the cello. (Why the cello? I wrote this book in part to find out.)
The doomsday atmosphere of 2001 also infused me with the desire to find a heroic story to tell because that was the kind of story that I needed to hear. The search for a hero led me to Casals, a cellist known for his stance against fascism. In early 2002 I visited Puerto Rico, where the musician spent the last years of his life. There I studied archival footage of Casals, sifted through documents, and met people who had known the maestro or his students.
Almost from the start, there were aspects of Casals's life that didn't fit the story I wanted to tell; aspects of other musicians' lives that did; questions that could not be answered (problematic for a journalist, but alluring for a would-be novelist); and a rich overlap of incident and experience that showed me that Casals's life as a musician and public figure was not altogether unique. The lack of uniqueness did not mean I'd stumbled into a dead-end. It promised, instead, a doorway into other places and lives. Casals's story, itself more complex than I'd first imagined, pointed the way to stories of many other European musicians and composers and even visual artists. Most interesting to me were the similarities of these individuals' backgrounds, challenges, and moral dilemmas. I found I was interested in these composite stories and situations—a broader scope and larger canvas than my original vision had allowed, with room for quixotic digressions (and even for Don Quixote himself, another source of inspiration).
Where imagination promised to lead me in a fruitful direction, I followed it, becoming, to my complete surprise, a novelist in the process. In the end I chose to shelve all plans for a nonfiction book and instead write a novel about protagonists who ask themselves some of the same questions I had asked myself in 2001:
Is this what I should be doing with my life? In difficult times, is art an indulgence or a necessity? Must I sacrifice my own happiness to what is going on around me?
And, politics aside:
Who will remember me?
While I ask readers to interpret the final work as fictional, music-oriented readers may still recognize purposeful similarities between Casals and my main character, Feliu Delargo. Casals and Feliu share a Catalan upbringing, royal patronage (by different queens), ownership of a gem-studded bow, and Republican political views. However, Casals was born in 1876, Feliu in 1892, putting them in contact with a different range of musicians, politicians and monarchs, and different artistic and political events. Casals never toured with anyone like the Al-Cerraz and Aviva characters of my book, had no relationship with Franco, and never performed for Franco or Hitler. While both Casals and Feliu refused to play (musicians and composers of the 1930s and 1940s commonly struggled with the question of performing in politicized situations), they did so at slightly different historic junctures, and with different consequences.
In a similar vein, Justo Al-Cerraz shares some superficial traits—including girth and a flair for mythologizing—with the Spanish pianist and composer Isaac Albéniz, but the two men are more different than alike. Albéniz lived from i860 to 1909, so he was terminally indisposed before much of my story takes place. He had no political difficulties or involvement in the Spanish Civil War, obviously, and did not disappear at the end of his life. He never toured with a well-known cellist. His compositions, unlike Al-Cerraz's, were successful and accepted.
Having vouched for the fictional (or mostly fictional) natures of my main protagonists, I nonetheless admit to filling many smaller roles with characters drawn from real life—partly to enhance the appearance of reality, and partly for my own entertainment and for the entertainment or consternation of my protagonists. These less fictionalized minor characters include King Alfonso XIII and Queen Ena of Spain, Manuel de Falla, Sir Edward Elgar, Pablo Picasso, Varian Fry, Francisco Franco, Adolf Hitler, Bertolt Brecht, and Kurt Weill. Of course, I felt free to take liberties with all of them where it suited the needs of my story.
Travel, including visits to palaces, musicians' birthplaces, and other settings used in this book, was the most important component in my research. (I did choose to walk through the gardens of Spain, rather than rely on any book from the rue de Richelieu.) For period detail and thematic inspiration, the following books also proved essential:
The Spanish Civil War,
1936—39
and
Franco: A Biography,
both by Paul Preston;
Homage to Catalonia
by George Orwell;
The Week France Fell
by Noel Barber;
Picasso's War: The Destruction of Guernica, and the Masterpiece That Changed the World
by Russell Martin;
Kurt Weill on Stage
by Foster Hirsch;
Theatrical Performances During the Holocaust,
edited by Rebecca Rovit and Alvin Goldfarb; and
Ena, Spain's English Queen
by Gerard Noel. I learned much from
The Spanish Labyrinth
by Gerald Brenan and quoted from it directly in describing the "sin of liberalism" as taught to young Feliu by his catechism teacher. I also relied upon detail provided by a documentary,
Assignment Rescue: The Story of Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee,
directed by Richard Kaplan and written by Christina Lazaridi. For impressions of Isaac Albéniz, I am indebted to
Isaac Albéniq: Portrait of a Romantic
by Walter Aaron Clark. Interviews and museum visits provided primary source materials from the life of Pablo Casals; however, his voice comes across most clearly in
Joys and Sorrows: Reflections
by Pablo Casals as told to Albert E. Kahn.
During my 2002 research trip to Puerto Rico, I attended a performance of the San Juan symphony and fell under the spell of that orchestra's principal cellist, Jesús Morales. He agreed to give me private lessons while I was in Puerto Rico, putting up with my limited musicianship and indulging my curiosity about many aspects of cello playing, especially Hispanic cello playing. Mr. Morales also facilitated my visit to Pablo Casals's home in San Juan, where he performed from the Bach cello suites, a highlight of that research trip.
I am grateful to my editor, Rebecca Saletan, for trusting a first-time novelist to tackle the many collaborative drafts necessary to complete this project. Without the early confidence of my agent, Elizabeth Sheinkman, I wouldn't have made it past the first tentative pages. Thanks also to Stacia Decker, David Hough, Judith McQuown, Cathy Riggs, Liz Demeter, Jennifer Gilmore, Michelle Blankenship, Vaughn Andrews, Laurie Brown, Patty Berg, and the rest of the Harcourt team for their editing, design, promoting, and administrative talents, and to Ravi Mirchandani, Jason Arthur, and Jamie Byng in the U.K. for early enthusiastic support.
My husband, Brian, and children, Aryeh and Tziporah, have been my constant companions on this journey, willing to go anywhere and try anything in the name of music, literature, and Spanish chocolate. Thanks to fellow Alaska writers Bill Sherwonit, Lee Goodman, Ellen Bielawski, Nancy Deschu, Sonya Senkowsky, and Jill Fredston for their advice and support; to my sisters, Honorée and Eliza, and my mother, C. Romano, for reading early drafts; to Amy Bower and Keith Jensen for long-distance encouragement; to cellists Linda Marsh-Ives and Linda Ottum for teaching me; and to Karen and Stewart Ferguson for more than a decade of friendship and many excellent book recommendations besides. For answering my e-mail queries about
Der Jasager,
I thank Dave Stein of the Kurt Weill Foundation; for interviews and assistance during my visit, I am grateful to the staff of the Museo de Pablo Casals in Puerto Rico and the Centro Cultural Manuel de Falla in Granada, Spain.
This project benefited from the generosity of the Rasmuson Foundation and the Alaska Council on the Arts, organizations that provided moral and financial boosts at critical moments.
Finally, a standing ovation to the amazing cellists, living and dead—including Pablo Casals, Han-na Chang, Hamilton Cheifetz, Lynn Harrell, Emil Klein, Yo-Yo Ma, Jacqueline du Pré, Nathaniel Rosen, Jânos Starker, and Julian Lloyd Webber—whose recordings played in my headphones for thousands of hours while I was writing this book. I hope this novel encourages readers to seek out music that is far beyond the power of words to describe.