The Heart Has Its Reasons (11 page)

Among his second-semester courses was Twentieth-Century Spanish Literature, which took place in the Cathedral of Learning, Pitt's emblematic landmark.

Daniel arrived at the first class early, just after lunch, hurried as usual. He stretched out his legs and relaxed as he waited for the profes
sor's arrival, risky behavior for someone exhausted from the nightly effort of loading trucks. In a few minutes his chin was resting against his chest, his hair was covering his eyes, and his mind was plagued by those strange presences that swarm in the first moments of sleep.

A quick, sharp kick to his left foot jolted him awake. He immediately muttered an embarrassed “I'm sorry” while swiftly recovering his composure. Before him stood a dark-complexioned man with a corsair's thick beard, dark combed-back hair, and emphatic eyes like two pieces of coal.

“Siestas, at home and in summer. And, if at all possible, in the shade of a grapevine, with an earthenware jug of cold water by your side.”

“I beg your pardon, sir . . .”

“We come here to work, young man. There are better places for napping. Your name, please?”

With a still somewhat shaky command of Spanish, Daniel was debating between specializing in this language or French, not knowing for sure which of the two cultures he would end up marking as his territory. But he grasped the meaning of the message immediately, just as he grasped that its speaker didn't seem in a mood to tolerate any kind of nonsense in his classroom.

Before shattering the family's expectations for good, his contact with the Spanish-speaking world had been confined to basic grammar and an arsenal of somewhat unrelated facts regarding painters, monuments, museums, and certain gastronomic curiosities such as octopus, oxtail, and those marzipan rolls with the sinister name of “saints' bones.” Added to that, at most, would be reading Hemingway's
For Whom the Bell Tolls
one long summer night, and a handful of stray expressions mumbled by mustachioed Mexicans in Westerns on Saturday afternoons in the Warner Theatre of his native Morgantown.

But it was not long before that man's classes tipped the balance for Daniel. The poets of the Generation of '27 along with a fascination with the Spanish Civil War ultimately persuaded him that his studies in Spanish language and literature, despite his family's opposition, had
been worthwhile. His relationship with his parents, however, never quite sorted itself out. They still couldn't understand why their son wasted his outstanding intellect in pursuit of an absurd academic specialty that in their eyes augured an uncertain professional future and a hardly promising social position.

Perhaps his decision was merely due to a rebellious impulse, to an unconscious urge to lash out against the established order of things.

Whatever was the spark, it soon burst into a flame that torched his elders' plans and left a clean slate upon which to establish his career. And hovering above it all, intangible but powerful, was Andres Fontana's push.

In the end it all came down to a verse—a simple handwritten verse found in the folds of a dead poet's pocket. Words of apparent simplicity that Daniel would have never fully understood had his professor not opened the young student's eyes. Andres Fontana wrote them in white chalk on the blackboard:
These blue days and this sun of childhood.

“What was the sun of Antonio Machado's childhood like, Professor?”

The question came from a bright-looking female student with the face of a mouse and large horn-rimmed glasses who always sat in the front row.

“Yellow and luminous, like all others,” blurted out a smart aleck.

A few laughed timorously.

Not Fontana.

Nor Daniel.

“One only appreciates the sun of childhood when one loses it,” the professor said, leaning against the edge of his desk with the chalk between his fingers.

“When one loses the sun or loses one's childhood?” Daniel asked, raising a pencil in the air.

“When he no longer has the ground he has always walked upon, the hands that have held him, the house he grew up in. When one leaves for good, pushed by an external force, never to return.”

Then the professor, who had scrupulously adhered to the syllabus until that day, dropped all academic formalities and spoke to them. Of
loss and exile, of letters stored away and memory's umbilical cord; of something that, despite mountains and oceans separating souls from the sun of childhood, is never severed.

By the time the classroom bell rang, Daniel was absolutely certain where his future lay.

A few weeks later, having finished reading “Lullaby of the Onion” by Miguel Hernandez, Fontana caught them by surprise with a proposition.

“I need a volunteer for . . .”

Before Fontana even finished the sentence, Daniel had already raised his arm toward the ceiling in all its noticeable length.

“Don't you think, Carter, that before volunteering you should know what it entails?”

“It doesn't matter, Professor. You can count on me.”

As the days went by, the young man's attitude did not cease to amaze Fontana. Throughout the many years that he'd been laboring away in American classrooms, he'd come across students from all types of background and of all natures. In very few, however, had he seen the enthusiasm exhibited by that tall, lanky kid.

“I'll need you for three days. We're going to hold a gathering of Hispanists, sort of a conference. As of Thursday we'll be assembling here; you must be available at all times until Saturday afternoon, for whatever we may require of you, from accompanying the visitors to their hotels to serving us coffee. Can I still count on you, or are you already regretting that you volunteered?”

Despite the fact that Fontana had spoken to them about what exile meant in connection to Machado's verse, Daniel back then hardly knew a thing about the numerous professors and Spanish university assistants who two decades earlier were forced to undertake that long and bitter road. Some had left during the civil war and others had done so when it came to an end and they were dismissed from their posts. The great majority underwent a long journey through Central and South America, wandering from one country to the next until they found a permanent place; a handful of them ended up establishing themselves in the United States. There were those who returned to
Spain and settled as best they could amid the Franco regime's intransigent rules. Others returned and stood firm in their beliefs despite the harshness of reprisals. And then there were those who never left, living an internal exile, bitter and silent. The list of the intellectual diaspora was considerable, and Andres Fontana was to meet some of them a few days later.

“By all means, sir, you may count on me; I'm at your service.”

He tried to sound convincing, but was lying. He had to work at the Heinz factory five hours on each of those nights. By means of some complicated swaps and a bunch of generous promises of double shifts during the following days he was finally able to convince a couple of colleagues to cover for him. He knew that to return the favor would entail a major effort and that he'd have to be totally reliable. But, out of pure intuition, he anticipated that those three days in the company of Hispanists would well be worth his while.

Driving Fontana's Oldsmobile, he picked them up from the airport, train station, and bus depot. Some of the newly arrived were fluent in English but had heavy accents; others were more limited. He taxied them back and forth, seeing to their every need with skill and grace; was courteous to them all; and memorized their various names, titles, and specialties. They discussed their country's literature in a foreign land, constantly taking the words out of each other's mouths, always eager to talk. Daniel made an effort not only to get to know them but to understand them and find out what was behind the strange labels of
galdosiano
,
lorquiano,
Cervantist, or
valleinclanesco
that they applied to one another regarding their areas of specialization.

In the process he also sought out in them the nostalgia of the childhood sun that Fontana had spoken to him about, but found only stray traces here and there, as if there was an implicit agreement among them not to bare their souls or touch upon deeper matters. They stuck to the surface of the banal, tossing barely a few crumbs of memory to the birds. One cursed the damned cold of those parts and recalled the warmth of his native Almeria. Another longed for Rioja wine during one of the lunches at the abstemious university cafeteria. A third one hummed a ballad at a well-endowed passing waitress: “
A good stew
instead of so much corn, now, that would be quite the treat!
” They hardly spoke of politics, touching upon it at times but refusing to be drawn in. No one wanted a black cloud looming over such a cordial conference.

Daniel went out of his way for them and learned a thousand new things. Rich-sounding words and titles of books, certain phrases, names of authors and towns, and even a swear word or two such as that blunt “
Coño!”
that many of them peppered their conversation with.

When Saturday afternoon rolled by, he and the department secretary dropped them off one by one at their trains, planes, and buses. After several successful trips throughout the afternoon, they thought they were done. Daniel stood in the practically empty hotel lobby, waiting for Fontana so he could return his car keys and get to the factory.

And then he saw them walk out of the bar.

“What's the plan for this evening, kid?” one of them asked from a distance. “There are still three of us left and your boss told us that you'd take care of everything until the end.”

A cold sweat ran down his spine. He had a double shift that evening, and he'd already arranged it with one of his factory colleagues: a quiet Pole, father of five, who didn't put up with jokes.

“I didn't know anything about it, sir,” he said, searching with urgent eyes for Fontana.

“Don't tell me that, young man! We decided to change our tickets at the last minute so as not to take the red-eye flight. We've just had a bite to eat, and you don't expect us to stay cooped up in our hotel till tomorrow morning.”

“I must speak to Professor Fontana; please forgive me.”

He tried not to show panic as he sought out the professor. He found him by the hotel entrance, seeing a couple off on their way to Buffalo.

“Well, now we're done,” Fontana said in satisfaction, patting his student on the shoulder. “Good job, Carter. I owe you a couple of beers.”

“I don't think so, Professor . . .”

“You don't want to go for a couple of beers with me some day next
week? Well, then, we'll have coffee. Or better yet, let me invite you to a fine restaurant: you deserve it.”

“I'm not saying I don't want to go out for a couple of beers, sir. What I'm saying is that this isn't over yet.”

He pointed discreetly to the three professors inside the lobby with their hats in hand, waiting for someone to take them out on the town.

“I've already got plans,” Fontana mumbled below his breath, coming to a dead stop. “No one told me these three intended to stay an extra night.”

Daniel knew already that there was a woman in Fontana's life. He didn't know her name and hadn't seen her face, but he had heard her voice. Accented, but in good English. He knew because he'd taken her call in Fontana's office some days earlier, when he'd gone there to receive instructions for the conference. “Answer, Carter,” Fontana told him on the third ring while he quickly slipped on his jacket. “And say I'm on my way.” He only heard her pronounce his name: “Andres?” And afterwards a “Very well, thank you” when he relayed his professor's message. Enough for him to realize that it was a relatively young woman. After that, nothing else.

“But we'd agreed that my duties with you would be over by Saturday afternoon,” Daniel insisted. “I have to work at the factory today; I've got to make up to my coworkers for the days that they've stood in for me.”

“Don't piss me off, Carter, for God's sake.”

“Professor, you know I'd be delighted to, but I can't, really . . .” he insisted, handing over the keys to his car.

The loud honk of a horn on the other side of the street interrupted their conversation. They both turned their heads toward a white Chevy with a woman seated at the wheel, her hair covered with a floral silk scarf and her face hidden behind sunglasses. Fontana raised his hand, motioning for her to wait.

“Think of something, Carter, think of something,” he mumbled, hardly parting his lips and not grabbing the keys his student handed him. “You can see there is nothing I can do.”

“If I don't show up at the factory tonight, I'll be fired on Monday.”

Fontana lit a cigarette with an anxious puff. On the other side of the lobby window, the three professors seemed to be getting restless.

“You know that if I were able to, I wouldn't hesitate, Professor, but—”

“The department will soon have to evaluate the scholarship applications for the following semester,” Fontana said, cutting him short, emitting a puff of smoke.

“And you think that this activity could be considered an academic merit?” Daniel asked, immediately catching the hint.

“Even outside normal hours, no doubt about it.”

The horn honked again and the three professors were about to emerge from the revolving door.

“I'll keep your car another night, then.”

Fontana's large hand gave him a squeeze on the neck.

“Take good care of them, kid.”

He took one last deep puff, flung the cigarette to the pavement, and crossed the street, headed toward the Chevy.

Chapter 12

T
hey drove around Pittsburgh aimlessly, Daniel behind the wheel of Fontana's car, throwing fleeting glances at his watch. He had to find a way to keep the three Hispanists entertained in the Steel City no matter what, and there were only forty minutes left before his shift began. It started to snow.