All Roads Lead to Austen: A Year-long Journey with Jane Read online

  “So does this mean you’ll stay here and keep me company?” We hadn’t discussed a joint living arrangement, but I’d been secretly hoping he would just move in with me for the three months I’d be there.

  As I settled into the swinging hammock, he gave me a hand-in-the-cookie-jar smile. “I brought a bag of clothing over before you got here.”

  ***

  Diego headed off to work the next morning and suddenly, the house felt huge and empty. As much as I love to explore new places, over the years I’ve been prone to panic whenever I relocate. It’s a sort of traveler’s stage fright, an intense anxiety that always goes away but not before I spend anywhere between a day and a week hiding in my bedroom, typically with a book, thinking, “What the hell am I doing in this place?!” It had hit me the hardest when I lived for a year in Prague, owing to the huge language barrier, but it happens whenever I find myself in new surroundings. On my first visit to Antigua I’d lived in closer quarters with other people, so it was less intense than usual.

  Now I was rambling around a three-story structure—alone.

  I abruptly stopped seeing the house through Diego’s eyes and saw it through a different pair: my mother’s. Not a window on the ground floor had glass. There were bars to keep out prowlers, but all sorts of things could fit through bars, you know. The second-floor passageway between the bathroom and the bedrooms was gated at either end but had no walls or glass either. That just can’t be safe! And how on earth will you keep things clean? As for the outdoor cement staircase leading to the roof patio, it had no railing. My maternal grandmother, born in the United States after her parents emigrated from Germany, had died a decade earlier, but the sight of that spectacular two-story drop from the roof patio down to the back yard would have led my mother to channel an extra generation’s worth of maternal concern: Gott in Himmel—it’s a death trap! Don’t they have a law against people moving into houses that aren’t done yet?!

  So I wouldn’t be sending any photos of the house to my mom. Except maybe a nice close-up of the flowers over the entryway. But the least I could do was venture out and find a pay phone to call her—that would keep me from hunkering down in the house all day like a ninny. She had no doubt been staring at her phone since an hour before my plane took off for Mexico, perhaps wondering if there had been a crash so devastatingly horrible they were afraid to talk about it on the news.

  As I dressed and set out for the bus stop to the center of town, I felt my panic receding. I’d been here twice already, for Pete’s sake; I knew my way around. No call for alarm. After finding a pay phone and assuring my mother that I was indeed still alive, I went to hunt for fotonovelas.

  Anyone who wants to learn Spanish should know about fotonovelas. Some Mexicans turn their noses up at these popular works, but they’re hugely helpful for learning the language. Essentially they’re novels told via sketches (not photos, despite the name), similar to comic books but the size of small paperbacks. There’s an infamous subgenre people used to call “Tijuana Bibles,” cheesy porn with lurid sketches. While the porn business is still booming, the other main genres are romances and westerns.

  For romance, there are three biggies: El Libro Seminal (Weekly Book), Amores y Amantes (Love and Lovers), and Libro Sentimental (Sentimental Book). These are the series names; each individual volume has its own catchy title, like “My Father-in-Law, My Lover!” “He’s Shameless but He’s Mine!” and “Endless Suffering!” Libro Seminal is the most realistic, Amores y Amantes, the boldest and sauciest, and Libro Sentimental, tear-jerkingly maudlin.

  To give you an idea how the three differ, let’s take an underrated Austen heroine, the one who would have adored Antigua: Catherine from Northanger Abbey. In Austen’s novel, sheltered country girl Catherine travels to Bath with family friends, where she meets a witty clergyman and learns to behave in proper society. Visiting the abbey home of the clergyman, she’s led by an overdose of Gothic novels to suspect that his father, the widowed General Tilney, has done in his wife. Embarrassment, then marriage, ensues.

  Fotonovela authors crank out a new title every week. If they got their hands on Catherine, the story would unfold something like this:

  Caterina, from humble San Sebastián, travels to exciting Puerto Vallarta with the González family. While there:

  Libro Seminal: Caterina gets invited to dinner by a mysterious yet somehow familiar man and finds herself attracted. She wakes up on the weekend still thinking about the mystery man. To distract herself, she goes with Señora Gonzalez to the commercial center and both buy attractive new dresses.

  Amores y Amantes: Caterina gets seduced by a college boy on holiday and feels guilty yet somehow fulfilled. She wakes up on the weekend, only to discover she’s been abandoned. To distract herself, she seeks comfort in the experienced arms of a retired army officer, recently widowed.

  Libro Sentimental: Caterina gets a job as a maid for a gringo, who drugs and frames her for pushing his five-year-old daughter from a window (a crime actually committed by his drunken wife). She wakes up in jail surrounded by hardened female prisoners. To distract themselves, they beat and abuse her for killing a helpless child.

  Never has life been so exciting for Caterina! And when she least expects it:

  Libro Seminal: Caterina discovers that the mysterious man used to be her best friend’s parish priest but renounced his vows when he saw Caterina at a wedding and doubted his calling. Returning to quiet San Sebastián, Caterina is unable to forget the fallen priest. Is it a sin to love a man who has renounced his calling?

  Amores y Amantes: Caterina discovers from the retired officer’s handsome son that her new lover is hiding a desperate secret in his palatial house—about his recently deceased wife. Returning to quiet San Sebastián, Caterina is unable to forget the retired officer’s handsome son. Is she a bad woman for desiring the son of a woman who died so mysteriously?

  Libro Sentimental: Caterina discovers that she’s been assigned a top defense lawyer—then learns that the lawyer’s only sister died in a fall from a window owing to negligence and is determined to see Caterina hang. Returning to her quiet cell after the trial, Caterina prays humbly, regretting only that she must die without having any children. Will her misery never end?

  Clearly, all hope is gone! But finally:

  Libro Seminal: The fallen priest pays Caterina a surprise visit and begs her to forgive him for not wanting to live a lie in the church; moved by his sincerity, she consents to be his wife, and they live happily ever after.

  Amores y Amantes: The retired officer’s handsome son pays Caterina a surprise visit and confesses that he hinted at dark secrets in order to separate her from his father. Moved by his ardor, she consents to be his wife, and they live passionately ever after.

  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 villag
e 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 nic
e 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.