The Heart Has Its Reasons (3 page)

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

T
he 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.”

“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.

I figured he must be three or four years younger than myself; recently turned forty, no doubt, but no older than that. There were the unmistakable signs of gray streaks at his temples and small creases at the corners of his eyes, which did not in any way diminish his appeal. He was the son of a Chilean psychologist, he explained, and a trauma surgeon from Santander who had been living in the U.S. for a long while but with whom he didn't seem to have much contact.

Luis Zarate clearly enjoyed talking, and I selfishly took advantage of the situation, giving him free rein. The less I had to explain about my own matters, the better. I was already familiar with his academic career, but discovered that he had been in Santa Cecilia only a couple of years and that his intention was to leave as soon as possible in pursuit of a ­position at some prestigious East Coast university. To my relief,
after having spent more than half an hour chatting with him, I was convinced that this specialist in postmodern cultural studies couldn't have cared less about the yellowing bits of paper belonging to an old professor who'd been dead for three decades. Thus I would be able to continue working at ease without having to give explanations to anyone.

I was already in the hallway, about to make my way back to the storeroom, when, as if not quite willing to let me go, he called me back from his office door.

“I think it would be a good idea to organize a little get-together to introduce you to the rest of our department colleagues.” He did not wait for my answer. “At noon on Thursday, for instance,” he added. “Next door in the conference room.”

Why not? It would do me good to climb out of my hole and socialize a little, I thought. It would also be a convenient way to put names to some of the faces I had been coming across in hallways and on campus.

The proposed lunch date finally rolled around. The conference room was quite large, with several windows, a bookcase full of old leather-bound books, and a collection of photos displayed on the wall. The university's catering service had prepared a cold buffet of meats, cheeses, fruit, and salads. Hardly anyone sat down: we all served ourselves standing, chatting away in small groups that varied according to the flow of conversation.

The department chairman kept pulling me from one group of professors to the next. There were Americanized Hispanics, Hispanicized Americans. Chicano literature professors; experts on Vargas Llosa, Galdos, and Elena Poniatowska; specialists in comparative linguistics and Andalusian poetry as well as enthusiasts of all things mestizo or alternative. The great majority I knew by sight. Rebecca was also at the luncheon, participating in conversations while overseeing the event with a keen eye. Fanny, meanwhile, alone in a corner, feasted on roast beef and Diet Pepsi, absorbed in her own world as she chewed away industriously.

The lunch lasted exactly sixty minutes. At one o'clock sharp the diaspora took place, whereupon a couple of students dressed in blue and yellow—the university's colors—began to clear out the leftovers. When
almost everyone had gone, I was finally able to center my attention on a wall that was covered with photos.

Some were older, others more recent, individual and group photos, in color and black-and-white. The great majority commemorated institutional events; the conferring of diplomas, graduation speeches, conferences. I was in search of some familiar face among them when I noticed Rebecca approaching me.

“The history of your new home, Blanca,” she said with a trace of nostalgia.

She fell silent for a couple of seconds, then pointed to four different photos.

“And here you have him: Andres Fontana.”

A strong, energetic bearing. Dark eyes, intelligent beneath bushy eyebrows. An abundant head of curly hair combed back. A thick beard and a serious expression when he was apparently listening to someone. A man of flesh and blood despite the motionless images.

I was overwhelmed. With a pang in my stomach, I backed away from the wall.

I needed space, distance, air. For the first time since my arrival I decided to give myself a break.

Without even going back to the storeroom to turn off the lights, I wandered around Santa Cecilia, discovering places I'd never encountered before. Streets through which an isolated car or a solitary student on a bicycle appeared once in a while; deserted residential neighborhoods; remote areas I'd never set foot in, until my erratic steps took me to a unique spot: a large expanse of woodland, a mass of pine trees ascending a slope and disappearing into the horizon. By that time of the day, close to dusk, the effect was overwhelming. Though it lacked the drama of many picture-perfect sites that could be captured within the confines of a postcard, it possessed a rare atmosphere of solace and serenity.