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

  “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.

  No, I was thinking. No, it’s not. “Yes, it is,” I said. “But it’s…different. It’s a little slower at the beginning.” In other words, no, it’s not. I plunged forward. “It’s got a very good message. And it’s funny, too, but more subtle than Pride and Prejudice. You’ll enjoy reading about the sisters.” Candela’s older sister, married, no longer lived at home.

  That workday had been particularly draining for Juan, who finally came in late, hungry, and visibly tired. Handsome and well built, about Josefa’s age, he had thick, prematurely gray hair that made a striking contrast with his still youthful face. He’d worked for years as a bricklayer and construction worker and had recently managed to open his own business, where he sold building materials. He was too tired to disguise his alarm at the size of the book.

  “Wow,” he said, blowing out a big gust of air. “We’ve got a lot of time to read this, right?” He exchanged a look with his daughter, who seemed to share his concern. Josefa stroked his arm reassuringly. I got the feeling she had readily agreed when Diego approached her about the book group and had been working to convince Juan and Candela ever since.

  “Definitely,” I assured them. “I’ll be here for three months. There’s plenty of time!” Diego, knowing his busy friends better than I did, decided it was best not to leave things quite so open-ended and added, “How about the first week of November, two months from now? Would that be enough time?”

  So, plans sketched out, we left Juan to a well-earned rest and headed off into the night, Austen mission accomplished.

  Chapter Five

  There was an upside to living in a house with almost no windows: free pets. For the whole of my stay in Puerto Vallarta an assortment of creatures came and went at will. Insects of all varieties and rodents were a given, and where there are rodents, there are cats. Various felines would drop by to startle me in the kitchen or interrupt as I sat at my desk in the upstairs hall making Spanish flashcards of words gleaned from fotonovelas (or when I was feeling sharpest, from Rulfo or Fuentes).

  I adored the resident cuizas, the rubbery little lizards I’d also spotted at Soledad and Salvador’s place. I’d randomly find them scurrying along the ceilings, dodging behind the bedroom curtains, staring at me from the showerhead. Before lights-out at night, bats would shoot through the hallway passage and sweep for insects. The least frequent but most exotic guests were garrobos, enormous lizards that would lounge on the rail-less stairs leading to the rooftop azotea.

  But what entered the house uninvited even more than the many creatures was noise. The daily volume in a Mexican neighborhood took some getting used to.

  Music topped the list. Shortly after arriving I spent a pleasant Sunday afternoon meeting Diego’s family at his sister Manuela’s house. Everyone was curious to see the strange traveling woman who’d entered their son’s/brother’s/uncle’s world. Diego’s mother had the same bright demeanor as his, and despite my paranoia that she and his sisters would give the stink eye to the hussy shacked up with him, all three women were kind and open. We enjoyed a wonderful dinner, complete with dessert coconuts that, when the meal started, were minding their own business up a tree in the yard. There was something darkly sexy about discovering that Diego could whack open a tough coconut with a single machete blow.

  Ah, but the music! From the noise level, the average American passing outside Manuela’s house would have assumed that nothing less than a wedding or a canonization was in progress. The only way to keep your neighbors in the United States from calling the cops if your stereo’s up that loud is to invite them over and liquor them up. I wonder how many ugly feuds get started in the States from a basic cultural misunderstanding—with Mexican immigrants thinking their neighbors are hassling them, maybe out of racist motivations, and the neighbors thinking the Mexicans are giving them a very stiff middle finger by playing their music so loudly.

  While my neighborhood was more tranquil than Manuela’s, the family across the street had a colossal parrot-like guacamaya caged in their front yard. Many families had noisy birds, but this one was off the charts. It muttered to itself constantly then every hour or so would let out a bloody shriek that set off every dog and rooster around. At first this seemed to be its only trick. Then with the first really hard rain, the bird went into an ecstatic freefall of sound that lasted almost an hour. It whistled, hooted, and screamed, barking out unintelligible words and raucously imitating the sound of human laughter.

  Each time thereafter, a hard rain drew me to the window. I would watch the guacamaya bob its gigantic blue head and sway on its thick wooden perch, transported, pouring out its song to the rain pounding the plastic cover of its cage.

  ***

  After the Pedro Páramo “They’re all dead” incident, I felt too embarrassed to go back to the bookstore downtown, so I found another along the main stretch to the airport, one with a reassuringly animated young clerk named Marisol. After the requisite apology for my poor Spanish, we chatted, and I explained about my travels.

  “It’s your job to travel around learning Spanish?” she asked in surprise.

  “Well, the other part is reading. I’m doing reading groups on Jane Austen.”

  “That’s your job, too?” She sounded almost indignant. “You get paid to read and talk about books? In different countries?” She glanced around the shelves, her expression saying loud and clear how much she wished she had time to devour ev
ery volume in the store. While traveling, better yet. “How do you get a job like that?”

  “Well, you study for years and years then fight it out with other people who want a job like that. There are very few university teaching spots and lots of people who want one.”

  She nodded, conceding that I hadn’t simply won the lottery. “And you’re reading Jane Austen? I’ve read Pride and Prejudice. Sense and Sensibility, too. I liked them both.”

  Ah ha! “What did you like about them?”

  “The history—seeing another country, a place so different from Mexico. I like reading about different customs, how people lived in the past. I like the style, too, something elegant, something that’s not common and every day.”

  “Is there a Mexican writer who’s like Austen, from that time period?”

  “No.” She shook her head sadly. “But for contemporary writers, there’s Ángeles Mastretta. She creates wonderful characters, but the settings are realistic, so you learn a lot about our culture.” Once again navigating a system that remained a mystery to me, she began pulling novels by Mastretta, born in 1949, from different locations on the shelves. “She’s very popular.” Marisol recommended Mujeres de Ojos Grandes (Women with Big Eyes), a book that shows how even the most ordinary women’s lives have a touch of magic. Stories don’t have to be about the siege of Troy to have value; quiet lives, surrounded by family, are worth sharing. If this sounds Austenesque, I agree—I think it is. As soon as I finished the book I put a copy in the mail to Guatemala for Nora and the others, each as special as any of Mastretta’s magical Mexican women. For good measure, I sent off a Graham Greene novel to Luis that I thought he’d enjoy.

  But despite what a nerd like me might lead you to believe, Puerto Vallarta’s not all about books and bookstores. There’s plenty of sociable fun to be had. Like boxing. Diego invited me to the fights, and after my time with Mastretta, some boy-oriented fun seemed appropriate.

  While our tickets got us into the arena, there wasn’t a seat to be had. Fortunately, half of the spectators seemed to know Diego, and after we stood a short while near the edge of the upper level deck, some friends spotted him and offered me a chair. The earliest matches were between young fighters in training. As the night advanced, the crowd got thicker, the arena hotter, and the collective voice of the fans drunker, louder, and more bloodthirsty.

  Morbidly fascinated, I watched the boxers pound each other. Diego used to do this? On the ride there, upset by the Willoughby betrayal in Sense and Sensibility, he’d been urging me to tell him whether things improved for Marianne. Could this same warm-hearted man, so troubled on behalf of Austen’s sensitive heroine, actually sock another human in the head with all of his strength, on a stage, in front of hundreds of screaming people?

  As if reading my mind, Diego leaned down and shouted over the din, “I loved to box, but I was never as good as my brother Pancho. You should have seen him!” Their sister Manuela later told me she’d attended one—and only one—of Pancho’s matches, bursting into tears and fleeing after two rounds at the sight of her brother’s face being publicly bloodied (and since Pancho won, presumably the other guy’s sisters felt even worse).

  Yet among the roaring spectators were quite a few women, some with young children. And that very pregnant woman, standing…I yielded my seat to her, its wooden borders my one small protection from the growing press of the beyond-capacity crowd. After accepting the chair, the glowing mother-to-be accepted a bottle of beer from a disembodied arm. Then a shot of tequila.

  “After these next two fights we’ll see the real boxers!” Diego said into my ear, pressed solidly against me from behind, both of us soaked with sweat. I could barely see the ring, and strangers were plastered against me on three sides as intimately as Diego was against the fourth. I toughed out most of the next fight then succumbed to the heat and frenzy. “Stay and watch, Diego,” I urged him. “I’ll wait on the benches in front of the bathroom. Stay!” I began unsticking myself from the crowd. But bless his kind nature, he followed me, too much of a gentleman to leave me waiting alone.

  I was upset with myself for disappointing him, but as we snaked our way to the exit he squeezed my hand and smiled. “Now we’ll beat the rush and get a taxi!”

  Okay. Was there such a thing as being too cheerful?

  If I’d taken Diego to something I enjoyed and he bailed just when things were getting good, could I have been as upbeat? Like, if we’d gone to the world’s biggest outdoor flea market on a beautiful day and he begged off just before we hit the tables with all of the books? As content as I felt with him, over the last month I’d begun to worry about just how long I stay cheerful myself. Yes, I wanted to be open to new ways of doing things, but was it natural for me never to grouse and fuss? Seeing him happy made me happy, that much I knew, so I’d taken to biting back any snarky comments on life’s little irritations just to avoid seeing hurt or disappointment in Diego’s eyes.

  “I’ve got an idea,” he said, ushering me into the taxi. “It’s a beautiful night. Let’s sleep up on the azotea!”

  Too cheerful? I must be mad.

  ***

  While the tourist industry cashes in on foreigners’ fascination with the Day of the Dead, for Mexicans it’s a serious celebration—not of death, but of life. I went with Diego to visit his grandmother’s grave on November 2, and I’ve never seen a happier bunch of people at a cemetery. The streets outside were lined with vendors selling colorful wreaths and enormous bouquets of flowers, and food vendors kept people fortified for their long vigils. Even before we entered I could hear the sound of mariachis, hired to play the favorite songs of departed loved ones. Young boys were giving the above-ground tombs fresh coats of whitewash, while older family members did the delicate work of repainting statues, repairing tiles, or tending live plants.

  Diego’s family had visited before we arrived, so his grandmother’s grave was laden with colorful wreaths, fresh flowers, and a large image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. On the high, flat surface of the tomb I didn’t see any food—until Diego lifted a large pink cross made out of flowers. Protected from the sun were bags of peanuts, potato chips, and candies.

  “She loved potato chips,” he smiled, laying the cross gently back in place.

  The evening after the cemetery visit, Diego arrived home looking distressed. “I’ve got bad news about the Austen group,” he said, sitting down at the kitchen table. We’d planned to get together that week, so I was all ears. “Salvador and Soledad are finished with the book, but not Josefa and her family.”

  I decided to be Diego-like and look for the positive. “We’ll just have to set another date. I could use some rest, actually, since I’m not feeling so great right now.”

  That was an understatement. Some kind of illness was creeping up on me, turning me into an Ugly American; the day before, prior to visiting the cemetery, I’d had a genuine public snit. Numerous musicians and entertainers board the Puerto Vallarta city buses, perform, then pass the hat. That day as I sat wilting in a bus seat, hot, fussy, and in denial about getting sick, a lean young man entered.

  “BAM, BOOOOM, BAAAAAM! Ratatatatattattattt!” he snarled in imitation of the police firing on unarmed demonstrators, belting out his poetry of protest directly next to my seat. Normally I was supportive of people trying to earn a few pesos, but on that day, the poet’s assault on government abuse of power was an assault on my frayed nerves. Giving him my nastiest look, I made a big show of moving as far from him as I could get. Not my finest intercultural moment.

  The day after we rescheduled Austen, I was unable to get out of bed. And the next day, and the one after that. I was burning with fever and wracked by the worst body aches I’d ever experienced. I was scared and miserable, and Diego grew increasingly concerned. By the morning of the fourth day he sat on the edge of the bed and stroked my hair, his habitual look of cheer long gone. �
��Maybe I should call your mother?”

  Good lord—my mother! At least a week had passed since my last call. I’d been too fevered to think of her; she must be ill herself with worry. She’d been right all along—I was going to die in a strange foreign land. I wrote down her number and fell back into bed. Diego had only a local-use cell phone and needed to go to the neighborhood phone booth with a calling card. As I drifted back to sleep, I wondered how comforting my mom would actually find it to hear the broken English of a man she’d never met who, for all she knew, might have already sold me into white slavery and was fending off an investigation with placating phone calls.

  There was a doctor in the neighborhood, and when I was strong enough to walk the two blocks, Diego led me there. The man prodded me and concluded that I needed more rest—and antibiotics, which he pulled out of a drawer. “No need to bring a pharmacy in for a cut on this.” The doctor winked as he took Diego’s cash.

  The drugs didn’t help. My mind stayed mush, and I could only sleep and watch addictive Mexican soap operas and SpongeBob SquarePants dubbed into Spanish. A break in the monotony came two weeks later when I woke from a nap one day with a huge crimson 3-D rash covering my entire right leg. Two of Diego’s uncles lived in the neighborhood, and I’d met that wing of his family a month earlier when they’d invited us over for a party. I couldn’t reach Diego when he was working, so I thought of his cousin Lucia, a smart, capable woman I’d met at the party. She was a mother; she’d know what to do about an alarming, itchy rash.

  Every kid playing outside the family’s house (and that was quite a few kids) stopped dead at the sight of the panicky gringa with one flaming leg staggering into the yard. Fear and discomfort had reduced my Spanish to Tarzan level. “Leg hurts!” I whined. “Very red!” Someone ran to fetch Lucia who, patting my shoulder and tsk-tsking, led me gently to a pharmacy. More antibiotics, once again ineffective. The strange rash disappeared after a few hours only to reappear randomly on various parts of my body for a week or so—one day on my back, another on my belly, then again on my leg. Very weird, very distressing.