All Roads Lead to Austen (9 page)

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.

My mother's not an effusive person when it comes to expressing affection; she's too old-school German for that (and while I'm stereotyping, I'll add that she's a quarter Irish, which gives her a warm heart and a great singing voice). When I could finally make the four blocks to the pay phone, she said simply, “I'm glad you're stronger, Amy.” Someone who didn't know her well might think she seemed oddly casual, given the circumstances; I could hear the profundity of relief in her voice.

“It must have been scary to get calls about me from a stranger,” I said.

“Well, a little bit, but you trust him, so he must be a good man.” My mother's faith was better than medicine. I should have known not to underestimate her and assume she'd be mistrusting. I was reminded again of Austen. One of the reasons I love
Northanger
Abbey
is the faith Catherine's parents place in her when General Tilney boots her out of the abbey. The Morlands know bad behavior when they see it, trust their daughter, and never assume Catherine had done something inappropriate (which she hadn't). For my money, they're the best parents in any Austen novel.

As we caught up on family news, a dogfight erupted outside of the phone booth. If there were leash laws in that part of Mexico, nobody obeyed them, so pet dogs (and cats and goats and chickens) had free range of the neighborhood. Typically the dogs formed themselves into friendly packs, rolling and playing on the brick and dirt streets, but occasionally the pecking order needed to be refined.

“What's that? Is everything okay? What's happening there?” my mom cried as the fight grew noisier and two of the dogs bowled into the phone booth. Yes, there it was, the old familiar sound of “Something terrible is going to happen to my daughter!”

My mother trusted me; she still wasn't so sure about Latin America.

But she was right about Diego. He was a good man. During the three long weeks of illness he was kind and loving, nonstop. He was patient and attentive in the evenings and when he had to work, he popped in between fares with marlin burritos, bowls of soup from his mother, and small stuffed animals (including an adorable stuffed Chihuahua). A good man, indeed.

Too much time alone with my own thoughts was forcing me to realize just how much I'd been denying the growing depth of my feelings for Diego. When we'd been constantly on the move—swimming, hiking, visiting with his family, romping on the
azotea
—it was easy to enjoy the moment and not worry about the future. But like it or not, thoughts of the future, of me preparing to leave and Diego needing to stay behind, were beginning to intrude.

But what could I
do
about it? At the moment, nothing. So, back to my uncomplicated relationship with Bob Esponja—otherwise known as SpongeBob.

***

When I was finally strong enough to get out of the house, we set another date for our
Sense
and
Sensibility
discussion. As a warm-up before our private evening of culture, Diego invited me out to hear a friend perform at a small café in what the flyers called “A Night of Poetry, Music, and Art!” Mexican hipsters strolled among the tables, trailing pot smoke. Diego and I were uncool enough to order fruit juice, which we were sipping when a young man detached himself from a cluster of artsy types and approached, greeting Diego laconically. Then he fixed me with a haven't-I-seen-you-somewhere? stare, just as I thought, “Jesus H., no way!”

“This is Tito the poet,” Diego announced. Ah yes, I'd heard Tito and his poetry.

Now there he was, smiling wickedly, pulling up a chair. I was cornered. “Glad you came, Diego! We've got to keep the arts alive. But it's hard in a town with so many tourists,” he said pointedly, his gaze locked with mine. So you remember where you've seen me before, Señor Guerilla Bus-Poet!

Fortunately the show started, and Tito slipped off. Two singers took the stage in succession, then Tito made a grand reentrance. He performed poems about the death of culture, ducking off periodically to change costumes. He was a wrestler, an old indigenous man, a sashaying prostitute. “
Hay
que
violarla, hay que violarla
,” he crooned, picking up volume with each repetition, “
HAY
QUE
VIOLARLA, LA CULTURA EN VALLARTA
!” You've just got to rape her, the culture in Vallarta!

I certainly agreed on the need to stage live events, to haul people away from their TVs, to keep the quirky owner-operated coffee shop alive. I couldn't help but wonder, however, about Diego's take on criticisms of the tourist industry in the town where he'd spent his whole life.

“Sometimes the politicians here cater to tourists at the expense of the citizens,” he responded while we waited for the bus afterward. “But there's more culture now, not less. Before we were just a village. Now there are museums, bookstores, language schools. And
jobs
. There are lots of places in Mexico where there aren't. That's why so many Mexicans go to the United States. They don't want to leave their families, but people need jobs. Poets don't always think about these things.”

Well put. Maybe that's why Plato didn't want poets in his Republic. But would you really want to live in a world without poetry?

***

“There's another problem with the Austen group.”

By this point, I'd been in Mexico long enough to roll with the punches, so to speak. I waited for Diego to go on.

“Salvador and Soledad can't come on Thursday, because now her mother isn't free to watch the children that night. They'd like to meet on Monday instead, but Josefa and her family can't make it Monday, because of her husband's work.”

After getting a veto on several alternative dates, I concluded, “Sounds like we'll have to do two meetings.” Doing separate groups meant there'd be no opportunity for the families to interact and play off each other's ideas, but what can you do?
Así es la vida
.

“I was hoping you'd say that,” he smiled in relief. “Josefa would like to have the group in her house, and I think it's best we do the other one here.”

And so, at long last, the date for the first group rolled around.

Josefa led Diego and me into her comfortable living room, where we chatted until Candela joined us. Rather than have dinner afterward as I'd done in Guatemala, we decided to order pizza and eat first. Delivery pizza was still a novelty for many Mexicans, and I didn't want to put Josefa to the trouble of cooking. When Juan came home we shifted into the dining room. As we ate, I took note again of how gentle Josefa's manners were and how timidly she spoke. How on earth was my recorder going to pick up her soft voice?

But when the food was put aside and
Sentido
y
Sensibilidad
hit the table, she became a whole new Josefa. Clearly, she'd enjoyed the novel, had thought about it a lot, and was ready to go. Her husband and daughter let her take the lead in the conversation.

“Elinor is a wonderful character,” Josefa opened. “So reasonable but also so caring. She's a good sister to Marianne, who needs the extra attention. Elinor is a good woman.”

“That's what the book seems to be doing,” Diego added. “It shows us something about the times and the customs, but it also shows us about the values that the sisters have, values that are good for people to have. Like loyalty.”

“Definitely loyalty,” Josefa seconded. “Elinor is a very loyal sister.”

“But when it comes to the men, to Edward and, what's that other one?” Diego asked. Willoughby is a puzzling name for Spanish speakers. Too many unpronounced letters. “Willoughby, that one. At first I thought, hey, those two guys are just the same. They do the same thing—they're flirting, then suddenly they're gone. But Edward comes back, and you see that they're not at all the same. It makes you think about judging somebody's behavior before you've got the whole story.”

“Do you think Willoughby ever really loved Marianne like Edward loves Elinor?” I asked.

“Definitely,” Diego answered. “Why else would he come back and apologize to her sister, when there's no hope he could get Marianne back? It was his conscience, because he
did
love her and it bothered him that he'd hurt her so much.” In Ang Lee's beautiful adaptation, this scene is compressed into a single mournful shot of Willoughby watching Marianne's wedding from a distance.

Josefa nodded. “Repentance is a very important theme. He's sorry for what he did to Marianne. And Marianne, even more so—her behavior caused a lot of problems for everyone. But you can see that she's truly sorry.”

“The focus on values is important, and repentance is one of them,” Diego said. “But I think Austen shows that women are better overall about this kind of thing. There's that scene where Marianne wants to talk about what kind of person Willoughby is, and all Sir Middleton can do is go on about his dogs. I think this makes her a feminist.”

Not following the argument, I asked him to clarify. “How is Austen a feminist?”

“For focusing on people, forget about the hunting and all that guy stuff, for showing that women are more attentive to other people.”

I was intrigued by this conception of feminism, but Josefa chose just this moment to switch tracks. “Sir Middleton and those others, all of these men with no jobs! Sheesh!”

Her husband sighed and rolled his eyes at the thought of a man with no job. The new family business consumed so much time and energy it was never far from their minds. Josefa's comment led us into work and class issues in the novel, which then led us into the question of how hard it can be to make ends meet or improve your financial situation. Diego, Josefa, and her family, just like the ladies in Guatemala, had no trouble steering back and forth between their own lives and Austen's fictional landscapes.

For good measure, I took the time to ask the question directly: “Do you think this story could happen here, in Mexico?”

“Every single thing that happens in this novel could happen here,” Josefa answered without hesitation. She looked to Candela for confirmation on this, but her daughter smiled a little nervously and remained silent. “Marianne likes to study, to read,” Josefa continued, “but it seems that most women then didn't. It was like that here, too, in the past. Even now, there are men right here in this neighborhood who don't think their daughters need an education. Why do girls need to read if they're going to be in the house cooking and cleaning and sewing?” At this Candela shuddered in distaste and nodded.

Diego agreed. “If there are differences from how we'd behave, it's more about class than about culture. Austen's characters are rich people, really, and rich people here act just the same, worrying about money all the time, about keeping it in the family.”

“But any parent, rich or poor, worries about their kids having the best, being happy,” Josefa said.

“And not having their daughters get stuck with a bad guy,” Diego added.

“Someone hardworking,” Juan spoke up for the first time. “You want your daughter to find a hardworking man.”

“Without vices,” Josefa concurred.

Juan immediately repeated his wife's words for emphasis. “Without vices.”

“That's what's important for your children because you want them to be happy,” Josefa continued, and she and Juan both smiled at Candela. “I liked that the book had a happy ending.”

“With Edward getting the position in Brandon's church, the sisters get to stay close to each other,” Diego agreed. I was struck that the sisters remaining close was top on his list for why the book had a happy ending and immediately recalled the Tito-the-Poet conversation we'd had about Mexicans forced to search for work, forced to leave their homes. “It was really good of Brandon to help them that way, and he's not even a relative,” he added. “You expect your family to help, and so many people in this book don't even treat their family right.”

While everyone around the table nodded, I decided to check in on a point that usually gets my students in the United States going. “What do you think about the match with Brandon?”

After a second of hesitation, Josefa said, as firmly as she'd said anything all evening, “I
didn't
like it. He's really better for Elinor. I kept thinking those two would get together.” Diego looked over at me, nodding. He'd brought that up while reading the book, trying to wheedle details out of me in advance.