All Roads Lead to Austen (11 page)

My photos were from the initial limited-invite opening, an academic conference in 2003 that drew Austen scholars from around the world. We roamed the buildings freely before the public descended; some eager beavers were, in fact, being turned away at the gates while the conference was still going on. At one point I had timidly asked a guard if I could pretty-please sit for a moment in the second story window seat overlooking the front drive, apparently a favorite reading spot of Austen's. My nerdy wish was granted; it was a happy, quiet moment of communion.

“How many novels did Austen write?” Salvador asked. “She didn't live very long, did she?”

“She'd been writing since she was young, but she didn't actually publish until 1811. Since she died in 1817, her public career was short. She published four novels in her lifetime—
Sense
and
Sensibility
,
Pride
and
Prejudice
,
Emma
, and
Mansfield
Park
—then
Northanger
Abbey
and
Persuasion
were published by her family after her death.”

“That's a lot in a short time,” Salvador said with a look of respectful surprise.

“What about Mexican novels from the same period?” I asked. “Were there Mexican writers producing similar work?” I'd struck out on this question with Marisol at the bookstore and also got a unanimous
no
from Josefa and her family.

Salvador deferred to Soledad, who replied, “Austen's writing about people, about families. All the writers I know about from this time were concerned about politics and war. And they were all men.”

“There's Sor Juana,” Diego offered. “But she was writing much earlier.” Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz is the great anomaly of Mexican literature, a seventeenth-century nun who wrote spellbinding poetry, theological essays, and feminist arguments. She later renounced her work in a document signed in her own blood, under pressure from the church. If you've seen the portrait on a Mexican two hundred peso note, that's her.

Despite starting this second group much later in the evening, we ended up talking longer. By midnight I was seriously fading, still not fully recovered from my illness, and I could see Soledad lapsing back into longer and longer silences.
I
hope
we
tired
the
kids
out
well
enough
during
the
day
, her look was saying again. Salvador noticed as well.

“It took me a while to get into it, but I did like it, after all,” Soledad conceded with a smile as she and Salvador headed for the door. “It was fun to do something different like this!”

“Well, I've got a copy of
Pride
and
Prejudice
, and it's yours to borrow whenever you want,” Diego offered. With his characteristic directness and sincerity, Salvador quickly thanked him. “Yes, I'd like that.”

As for Soledad—
vamos
a
ver
. We'll see. I thought she was coming around, but I couldn't be sure she was an Austen convert yet. At least she'd finished the book, so there was definitely hope!

***

To toast the success of the groups, Diego took me to the city's annual celebration in honor of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music. The main square was filled with dashing groups of
mariachis
, all performing at once, competing for attention. An especially clever group one-upped the others by bringing an adorable little girl dressed in a wee jet-black jacket identical to theirs and a skirt with the same gold froggings that ran down the legs of their
mariachi
trousers. Not more than two, the girl danced as if every single person were there just to see her.

Although a few tourists milled about, the crowd was mostly a mix of locals and Mexicans on vacation from other cities. “There's a song I want you to hear,” Diego said as we worked our way through the press, pausing to enjoy the different style and handsome costuming of each group. “I'm sure some of them will do it.” But the hours passed and gradually, one group after another packed up, until only one group remained. Seeing how much it meant to Diego, I tried not to show him how exhausted I still felt from the illness.

“There,” Diego cried, just when I was afraid I'd finally have to confess or collapse. “That's it!
El
Mariachi
Loco
!” “The Crazy Mariachi” was apparently everybody else's favorite, too. The crowd swayed and sang along merrily. There were quite a few drinks circulating, but that communal pleasure wasn't alcohol induced. It was about sharing something familiar, about being out with family and friends in a classic Mexican mix of the sacred and the secular. God bless the martyred saint—let's dance!

Diego seized me around the waist and twirled me joyfully, laughing aloud, then pulled me up close against his side again to watch the musicians. I suddenly experienced an intense wave of travel schizophrenia: happy to be sharing the moment—above all, sharing it with
him
—but bluntly aware of being an outsider.

It wasn't just that I didn't know the song lyrics being belted out around me—I could learn those fast enough. It was about the layering of experiences that each person there had, all of the associations with the song, heard from childhood onward, sung at weddings, parties, other festivals, completely embedded in a rich network of shared memories. I could learn Spanish, but I'd never catch up. The second time I sang the song would be Diego's forty-second; my fifth, his forty-fifth.

Diego smiled over at me. I sighed and smiled back.

***

My relationship with my sister Laurie blossomed when she finished high school and we no longer had to share a room, but growing up I was closest with my older brother Shawn. We logged many hours together watching
Star
Trek
episodes and
Planet
of
the
Apes
films; when he was feeling ornery, he'd chase me around to fart on me. As Laurie and our oldest brother David each hit eighteen, they got married, got jobs, and started families. Shawn, a book nerd like myself, got a PhD, became a teacher, and stayed single (and eventually stopped farting on me, although he still enjoys farting
around
me and exclaiming in a pirate voice, “Arrrr! Music to me ears!”).

Before time and circumstances sent the Smith kids in different directions, we four spent many happy afternoons like millions of other youngsters raised in the sixties and seventies: playing Monopoly. At the celebration for Saint Cecilia, Diego had shared something quintessentially Mexican with me, something meaningful from his childhood. I wanted to share something other than Austen with him. Something 100 percent American, something from my Pennsylvania past. So I taught him how to play Monopoly.

Even in the Mexican version I'd bought, no game says “USA!” like Monopoly. The board's center was an attractive Aztec calendar, all the properties grouped by state. The good folks from the state of Guanajuato might not be too happy to know they housed the cheapie purple properties while Mexico City landed pride of place with the costly blue ones. Boardwalk was
el
Palacio
de
Bellas
Artes
, and Park Place,
el
Castillo
de
Chapultepec
. The railroads transformed into the
Centro
de
Autobuses
. I hadn't played in a good twenty years and needed to consult the rules, but it all came back pretty quickly. I explained to Diego the central challenge of the game: the need to buy property while retaining enough capital to develop it so that you can then bleed your opponents dry.

Diego's good nature did not serve him well in Monopoly. It looked promising when he bought the third yellow property after I had the first two, but that was as cutthroat as he got. Since Puerto Vallarta is in the state of Jalisco, it was only fitting that I completed this block first, those red properties that everybody lands on. Diego looked distressed when he saw my money disappearing into the bank, just like on shopping trips when he'd catch me buying yet another brightly colored blanket or irresistible owl statue. “
Mi
amor
,” he asked, “are you sure you need that many houses?”

His distress changed to stunned denial the first time he landed on the
Plaza
de
Liberación
with three houses. How on earth could the rent go from $20 to
$750
? Now the money that had drained from my stash into the bank began flowing from Diego's stash back to mine. I had tried to explain the principle of investments and returns, but only cold hard reality could teach that lesson. When he counted out the crushing rent a second time, I held a hand flat out, palm up, signaling “gimmee gimmee gimmee!” with my fingers—just like big brother Shawn would always do to his beleaguered siblings, so many years ago on the orange shag rug of our family den.

Diego was crushed. Who was this woman, this cruel capitalist
gringa
, and what had she done with his bookish, impractical girlfriend?

The handwriting was on the wall for his first Monopoly venture. It was getting late, and I was still more tired than usual, so we packed it up. He swore that he'd enjoyed it and would play with his family. But in the land of
mi
casa
es
tu
casa
—and when they say it in Mexico, they really mean it—a game where you charge your loved ones eye-popping rents until they collapse financially may not be quite the thing. For me, the game had been a wonderful trip down memory lane, bringing back rainy Pennsylvania afternoons, Velveeta sandwiches, Shawn's maniacal laughter over each property acquisition, and debates over why the mice that visited the box at night only chewed the hundred dollar bills.

None of these layers of memory were there for Diego as he'd watched me fuss over the precise arrangement of the houses multiplying in my tiny empire. And anyway, he could never catch up. It was
El
Mariachi
Loco
, in reverse. The second time he played Monopoly would be my forty-second; his fifth, my forty-fifth.

Stacking the bills back in the box, I smiled over at him. He sighed and smiled back.

***

Good-byes are a long process in Mexico, so I started mine shortly after the celebration for Saint Cecilia. One by one I visited Diego's family members, thanking them for all their help during my lingering illness. Warm as ever, full of good wishes for the rest of my travels, one by one they asked the same thing—when would I be back?

A very good question, but one I couldn't answer yet. The fact was that over the past month, Diego had begun urging me to return to Puerto Vallarta—for good. His existence was completely woven into the fabric of the city where he'd lived his whole life. During a family dinner when someone had asked me about life in the United States, Diego's mother, seated next to me, suddenly turned to clutch my arm. “Please don't take my son away,” she'd said quietly but with a depth of feeling that left me speechless.

I'd already uprooted myself from western Pennsylvania, but now I had a secure, tenured university position in California that had taken me years to earn. Could I give that up on the chance that things might work out between us long term? And what about the rest of the year's travels? Ecuador, Chile, Paraguay, and Argentina still lay ahead. Could we maintain a relationship over such time and distance?

The thought of leaving Diego, of traveling on without him, of not waking up beside him, of not hearing his happy laughter each and every day, made my stomach churn with fear. But how much of that was fear of being alone, of the unknown, and how much was about
him
, specifically? I'd known when I arrived in Mexico that I would have to turn around and leave again—how had I managed to get in so far over my head?

Feeling helpless and overwrought, I went to an Internet café to check my email, hoping for a bit of cheer from friends and family in the States. Instead I was hit with the hardest type of good-bye—the kind you don't get to say in person. Nora, who'd organized the Guatemala Austen group, had stayed in touch by email. She tried to break the news gently, but there was no way to say it except just to say it.

Luis, that sharp-tongued lover of literature, was dead.

“We were all sad at the school to hear that he passed away suddenly,” Nora wrote. “It was really shocking! And such a shame.” It turns out that Luis was diabetic. I immediately remembered the trip to the store I'd taken with him on our last day—to buy a fifth of rum.
Damnation, Luis
.

And what about his books? Luis had told me what an odd fish he was to his relatives, a life-long bachelor surrounded not by children and grandchildren but by hundreds and hundreds of books. What would his family make of them; what would they do with them? Someone I'd never met would come and carry off the translation I'd given him of
Pride
and
Prejudice
. Had he enjoyed it? The copy of Graham Greene's
The
Power
and
the
Glory
that I'd sent from Mexico a month earlier—was it there, too, among the piles? Had he read it? Had he liked it?

In the small private courtyard of the café, I had a long, hard cry. I couldn't help but lament all of the wonderful, challenging conversations—about Austen, about Spanish, about life and literature—that I'd never get to have with Luis. Antigua, when I returned, would not be the same without him.