The Heart Has Its Reasons, Page 2

  Ravenous, I finally sat down at a nearby coffee shop. While devouring a blueberry muffin and drinking a watery cup of coffee, I slowly took in the scenery. There was a large square clotted with trees and surrounded by renovated buildings with an adobe appearance that gave the whiff of a past halfway between America and Mexico, with a residue of something vaguely Spanish. Lined up on the opposite side of the square were a First National Bank branch, a souvenir shop, the all-important post office, and a CVS pharmacy.

  My next goal was to reach Guevara Hall, where I would find the Modern Languages Department. This was to serve as my work environment for a still undetermined number of months. Whether this interval would turn out to be an effective balm or a simple Band-Aid for my wounds remained to be seen, but in any case I would at least stop feeling trapped. Entering the campus, I remained vigilant so as not to get lost in that maze of paths where throngs of students were making their way by bike or on foot to their classrooms.

  The noise of the department’s photocopying machine masked the sound of my steps and prevented Fanny, who was working there, from noticing my arrival until I was right beside her. She raised her eyes and stared at me again for several seconds with her inexpressive face. Extending her right arm with an automaton’s precision and pointing to the open door of an office, she announced: “Someone is waiting for you.” Having nothing further to say, she turned and went off with that same dull gait as on the previous evening at the airport.

  I took a quick glance at the sign on the door as I entered. Rebecca Cullen, the name on almost all e-mails I’d received prior to departure, finally had a tangible place and presence. In addition to all the files and transcripts in her office were paintings saturated with color, family pictures, and a bouquet of white lilies. Her greeting was an affectionate, warm handshake. Her clear eyes lit up a pretty face from which the wrinkles did not detract. A large lock of silvery hair fell over her forehead. I figured she was in her sixties, and I had a feeling that she must be one of those indispensable secretaries who, with a third of their superiors’ salaries, are usually three times as competent.

  “Well, Blanca, finally . . . It’s been a total surprise to learn that we have a visiting researcher this semester. We’re delighted . . .”

  To my relief, we were able to communicate without a problem. I had laid the groundwork for my English during stays in the U.K. and had strengthened it through years of study and frequent contact with British universities. However, my experience regarding North America had only been sporadic: a few conferences, a family celebration in New York after my son Pablo passed his university entrance exam, and a brief research stint in Maryland. So I was reassured to confirm that I’d be able to cope on the West Coast without any great language barrier.

  “I think I told you in one of my last messages that the head of our department, Dr. Luis Zarate, would be at a conference in Philadelphia, so in the meantime I’ll be the one in charge of orienting you in your work.”

  Rebecca Cullen explained in general terms what I more or less knew I was expected to accomplish: to order and assess the legacy of an old faculty member who had died decades earlier. It was financed by SAPAM, the newly created foundation for Scientific Assessment of Philological Academic Manuscripts.

  “His name was Andres Fontana and, as you know, he was a Spaniard. He lived in Santa Cecilia until his death in 1969, and was much beloved, but the usual thing happened afterwards. Since he didn’t have any family in this country, no one came forward to claim his things and, awaiting someone to decide what to do, they’ve sat here all these years, stacked in a basement.”

  “Nothing has been moved since then?”

  “Nothing, until SAPAM finally endowed a grant to carry out this project. To be perfectly honest,” she added in a knowing tone, “I think it’s rather shameful that three decades have already gone by, but that’s how things are: everyone’s always busy, the faculty comes and goes. And of all the people who were familiar with and esteemed Andres Fontana in his day, hardly anyone is left here except a few veterans like myself.”

  I made an effort to disguise the fact that, if his own colleagues weren’t interested in that expatriate who had fallen into oblivion, I was even less so.

  “And now, if it’s okay with you,” she continued, getting back to practical matters, “first I’m going to show you your office and then the storeroom where all the material is kept. You’ll have to forgive us: the news of your arrival has been rather sudden and we haven’t had a chance to find you a better spot.”

  I pretended to look in my bag for a tissue to blow my nose, waiting for Rebecca Cullen to change subjects, hoping she’d move on to another matter quickly and not delve into the reasons why a Spanish professor with a secure professional career, an impressive CV, a good salary, family, and contacts had decided so swiftly to pack a couple of suitcases and move to the other end of the world like someone fleeing the plague.

  My new office turned out to be a remote cubbyhole, with no comforts and a single window—narrow, off to one side, and not too clean—overlooking the campus. There was a desk with an old computer and a heavy telephone supported by two sturdy outdated telephone books. Relics from other times and other hands; decrepit surplus that no one wanted any longer. We’d get along well, I thought. After all, we were both in a state of depreciation.

  “It’s important that you know how to find Fanny Stern: she’ll be in charge of supplying you with any materials you may need,” Rebecca announced, making way for me to navigate the turn that led into Fanny’s working space.

  On sticking my head in Fanny’s cubicle, I was overcome by a feeling of confusion but one that existed somewhere between tenderness and hilarity. There was not an inch of empty space on the walls, which were covered with playbills, calendars, posters of sunsets among snowy mountaintops, and sugary, optimistic messages like Don’t lose heart, you can make it; The sun always shines after a storm; and There’s always a helping hand nearby. In the middle of all this, beatific and absent, sat Fanny, gobbling up a white chocolate bar as greedily as a five-year-old.

  Before Fanny managed to finish swallowing and greet us, Rebecca went over to her and stood behind her. Holding Fanny by the shoulders, she gave her an affectionate squeeze.

  “Fanny, you already know Professor Perea, our visiting researcher, and you know what office we’ve assigned her, right? Remember that you must help her with everything she asks for, okay?”

  “Sure, Mrs. Cullen,” she answered with a full mouth. To emphasize her willingness, she nodded several times vigorously.

  “Fanny is very eager and a hard worker. Her mother was also part of this department for decades.” Rebecca spoke slowly, as if carefully choosing her words. “Darla Stern worked here many years, and for a while she held the position that I later took over. How is your mother, Fanny?” she asked.

  “Mother is very well, Mrs. Cullen, thank you,” Fanny replied, nodding once more as she swallowed.

  “Give her my regards. And now we’re off: I must show Professor Perea the storeroom,” she concluded.

  When we left, Fanny was again sinking her teeth into the chocolate bar, surrounded by her blissful posters and perhaps even some devil lurking somewhere in a drawer.

  “Before retiring from the dean’s office about four years ago, her mother saw to it that Fanny remained in the department as a kind of inheritance,” Rebecca explained with no trace of irony. “She doesn’t have a great many tasks, because, as you may have noticed, her abilities are somewhat limited. But her responsibilities are well-defined and she manages reasonably well: she hands out the mail, is in charge of making photocopies, organizes supplies, and carries out small errands. She’s an essential part of this house. And she can be counted on whenever you need her.”

  A labyrinth of hallways and stairs took us to a remote section of the basement. Rebecca, in front, moved about with the familiarity of someone who
had trod these floors for ages. I, behind, tried in vain to commit to memory all the twists and turns, anticipating how often I’d get lost before finding my way around. Meanwhile, Rebecca reeled off some facts about the university. More than fourteen thousand students, she said, almost all from out of town. Initially it was a college and eventually evolved into its present-day status of small, somewhat prestigious university. She mentioned that it currently created the most jobs and the greatest revenue of any institution in the community.

  We reached a narrow hallway flanked by metallic doors.

  “And this, Blanca, is your storeroom,” she announced, turning the key in one of the locks. When she finally opened it, with some difficulty, she flipped several switches on and the fluorescent lights sputtered to life, blinding us.

  I saw before me a long, narrow room like the corridor of a train. The cement walls, which had not been painted, were lined with industrial shelving whose contents spoke of dislocation and oblivion. Through two horizontal windows located at a considerable height, some natural light filtered in and the sound of hammering from a nearby construction site could be heard. At first it seemed like a rectangular space; however, after we had taken a few steps forward, I realized that the apparent shape and size were somewhat deceiving. At the back end, to the left, the storehouse had an L-shaped space that unfolded into another room.

  “Et voilà,” she announced, flipping on another switch. “Professor Fontana’s legacy.”

  I was filled with such a terrible feeling of discouragement that I was about to tell her not to leave me there, to take me with her, to shelter me in any corner of her hospitable human office, where her calm presence would mitigate my anxiety.

  Perhaps aware of my thoughts, she tried to rally my spirits.

  “Daunting, right? But I’m sure you’ll be making your way through it in no time, you’ll see . . .” she said as she took her leave.

  My eagerness to flee my domestic demons had led me to imagine that a radical change of work and geography would anchor me. But on seeing that chaos—piles of papers, folders strewn on the floor, and boxes stacked one upon the other without a trace of coherence, I felt I’d made a huge mistake.

  Even so, there was no turning back. Too late, too many bridges burned. And there I was, marooned in the basement of a campus at the farthest reaches of a foreign country, while thousands of miles away my sons ventured forth alone in the first stretch of their adult lives, and the man who until then had been my husband was about to relive the passionate adventure of paternity with a blond lawyer fifteen years younger than me.

  I leaned against the wall and covered my face with my hands. Everything seemed to be getting worse and I was running out of strength to endure it. Nothing seemed to be sorting itself out; nothing moved forward. Not even the immense distance had brought me a glimmer of hope. Even though I had promised myself to be strong, to endure courageously and not surrender, I began to notice that salty, murky taste of saliva that precedes weeping.

  Somehow I was able to hold back, to calm down and thereby halt the threat of succumbing. One step before descending into the void, some mechanism beyond my will kicked in and transported me via memory to a time far in the past.

  There I was, with the same chestnut-colored hair, the same slender body, and two dozen fewer years, facing adverse circumstances that were nonetheless unable to knock me down. My promising college studies were truncated in their fourth year by an unexpected pregnancy, intolerant parents who were unable to accept the blow, and a sad emergency wedding. An immature counterpart as a husband. A freezing subterranean apartment as a home. A scrawny baby that cried inconsolably and all the uncertainty of the world before me. Times of mackerel sandwiches for dinner, cigarettes of dark tobacco, and lousy tap water. Poorly paying private classes and translations on the kitchen table seasoned with more imagination than exactitude; days short on sleep with lots of rushing, shortages, anxiety, and confusion. I didn’t have a bank account; all I had was the unconscious strength provided by my twenty-one years, a recently born baby boy, and the closeness of the person I thought was going to be my life mate.

  Suddenly, everything had turned upside down and now I was alone, no longer struggling to bring up that skinny crying little kid, nor his brother, who came into the world barely a year and a half later. I no longer had to fight for that young rash marriage to work out, to help my husband in his professional aspirations, to achieve my own career by studying at dawn with borrowed notes and a stove at my feet. To pay for babysitters, day care, baby food, and a thirdhand Renault 5, to finally move to a rented apartment with central heating and two terraces. To prove to the world that my existence was not a failure. All this had been left behind and in this new chapter only I was left.

  Impelled by the sudden lucidity that the memories had brought, I removed my hands from my face, and as my eyes grew accustomed to the cold ugly light, I rolled my shirtsleeves up past my elbows.

  “Greater heights than this have been scaled,” I whispered.

  I had no idea about where to start organizing the disastrous legacy of Professor Andres Fontana, but I rushed headlong to work as if my entire life depended on the task.

  Chapter 3

  * * *

  The first few days were the worst: submerged in the storeroom, trying to find a thread of congruity amid the chaos. Dozens of notepads were scattered among folios, reams of yellowing papers, and countless letters and cards. Everything stacked on shelves that risked collapsing or in ramshackle piles on the verge of toppling over.

  After the first week I gained a certain confidence, and despite the snail’s pace I began to negotiate that shapeless mess more efficiently, giving each document a quick glance to ascertain its contents and assign it a corresponding category according to my rudimentary organizational scheme: literary criticism, prose and poetry, history of Spain, history of California, and personal correspondence.

  I’d begin work before nine a.m. and wouldn’t stop until past five o’clock in the afternoon, with a short lunch break in some corner of the campus cafeteria when I would absentmindedly leaf through the university’s newspaper. Usually it was rather late, toward two o’clock, when the cleaning crew would begin their perfunctory mopping of the floor and when only a few students were left scattered among the tables, some busy reading, others dozing off, still others wearily underlining in their books before finishing off their lunch.

  I finally met Luis Zarate, the department chairman, one day when I needed scissors to cut the tape from some bundles and mine were nowhere to be found, lost no doubt beneath some pile or other. Unable to locate Fanny to borrow a pair, I went to Rebecca’s office, where I bumped into her and Zarate going over a course syllabus together. She, seated, speaking deliberately. He, standing beside her with hands leaning on the table as he bent over the syllabus, seemed to be listening to her attentively. My first glance registered a slender, well-groomed man of roughly my own age with brown hair and rimless eyeglasses, wearing dark gray pants, a black shirt, and a light-gray tie.

  Once we had exchanged pleasantries, he invited me to accompany him back to his office. I inwardly regretted the deplorable state of my attire. My overly casual clothes, resistant to grime and cobwebs, would hardly make a professional impression on the person who was in effect my new boss. I looked dusty and disheveled, with a ponytail that could barely restrain my hair and dust-covered hands that I was forced to rub against the seat of my trousers before extending one to greet him.

  “Well, I’m delighted to welcome you to our department, Professor Perea,” he said, pointing to an armchair in front of his desk. “Or Blanca, if you’ll allow me,” he added while taking his seat.

  His cordiality sounded authentic and his Spanish excellent: polite, modulated, with a slight accent that I was not quite able to pinpoint.

  “Blanca, please,” I agreed. “I’m equally delighted, and thankful to have been accepted.�
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  “It’s always a pleasure to receive visiting professors, although we’re not used to having many from Spain. So your visit pleases us all the more.”

  I took advantage of that initial exchange of pleasantries to take a quick look around his office. Adjustable steel table lamp, modern prints, books and papers enviably in order. Without being altogether minimalist, it came quite close to it.

  “For us,” he went on, “it has been very gratifying to strike this deal with SAPAM to subsidize your work. Any initiative that involves attracting research from other institutions is always welcome. Although we weren’t expecting someone with your background . . .”

  His words put me on guard. I did not want to discuss the reasons that had pushed me to apply for this position so far from my area of expertise. I had no intention of being sincere, nor did I feel like inventing an awkward lie. So I chose to change the course of the conversation instead.

  “SAPAM and the department have been incredibly efficient in making all of the arrangements, and here I am, already immersed in my work. Santa Cecilia is turning out to be a very pleasant change of scenery to finish out the momentous year of 1999. Perhaps the world will come to an end as well while I’m here,” I said, trying to be clever.

  To my relief, he smiled at my clumsy joke.

  “What paranoia, this business of the end of the millennium! And in Spain all this madness must be affecting you all the more so now that the euro is about to become the new currency. How is it progressing, by the way? When will the old pesetas cease to function?”

  The reasons behind my applying for this fellowship turned out to be of less interest to the department chairman than a superficial conversation about recent events in my country on the threshold of the new century. We talked of Spain in general, of the situation in Spanish universities, of everything and nothing. In the interim, I moved out of harm’s way and, while I was at it, took advantage of the chance to have a thorough look at him.