The Heart Has Its Reasons (6 page)

They celebrated their first Christmas together toasting with soda water and cheap wine to a happy and peaceful 1931. And although the year was not a calm one, they did regard as fortunate the changes that took place barely a few months later with the king's exile and the arrival of the Second Republic.

On the twenty-third of May 1932 the son of the humble maid and the illiterate miner, neatly combed, wearing a tie and showing no apparent signs of nervousness, passed his pre-university entry exam with ease and before a foreboding tribunal. Doña Manolita would
have been proud to see that her pupil had satisfactorily carried out her plan. From the house of Señora Consuelo, the sturdy Asturian who lived in the second-floor apartment on the right, a long-distance call was put through to give Simona the news. She took the call in Don Ramon Otero's house: she was soaked with sweat from busily ironing her master's shirts. Deeply moved and unable to utter a coherent word in the unfathomable distance of the telephone lines, the poor woman was only able to repeat again and again, “My son, my son, my son.”

Chapter 6

A
s stipulated in the will, the next step in Andres Fontana's life was the university. In the early 1930s, the University of Madrid still lacked a common nucleus and had numerous buildings scattered throughout the capital, most of them quite old if not downright obsolete. The University City was still in its construction phase, immersed in a long process that had begun in 1927, driven by King Alfonso XIII's goal of endowing it with a space similar to American ones, where integrated planning, functional architecture, and extensive areas devoted to sports and recreation would be a priority.

The birth of the Second Republic and Alfonso XIII's sudden exile did not slow down the project—quite the contrary: it gathered momentum but was now forced to eliminate any inclination toward grandiosity and excess. When Andres began his first course, the humanities were taught in an old, ramshackle building on Calle San Bernardo.

The same perseverance with which he managed to succeed at his baccalaureate exam guided the young man in his university studies. He excelled to such an extent that in his third year, Professor Enrique Fernandez de la Hoz, lecturer in historical grammar, proposed that he be granted a fellowship to help teach the Spanish courses for foreigners that would take place the following semester. He accepted
the offer without even weighing the full consequences of the commitment.

Spreading the Spanish language was one of the activities of the Board for the Expansion of Studies, with lecturers sent year after year to universities in a number of countries and courses organized for foreign students and professors. Andres's affiliation with that program began in January 1935 and lasted until the end of March. He participated in conversation sessions, acted as a companion on visits and excursions, and attempted to solve any problems that arose among the group of American professors, from addressing language misunderstandings to finding a doctor at an ungodly hour to simply making the rounds of the most picturesque taverns in Madrid.

Andres was impressed by everything about those strangers. Their unflagging energy in capturing the simplest scenes with their modern cameras, be it a cat on a roof, a stone coat of arms, or an old woman in mourning selling eggs from a wicker basket hanging from her arm; the ease with which they spent money; the bright, almost thunderous colors of their clothes; those white-toothed smiles. Through them he learned to smoke his first filtered American cigarette and dance to the rhythm of swing with a Valkyrie from Detroit in the Hotel Palace's ballroom. He was moved, along with them, by the Roman aqueduct in Segovia and Velazquez's painting
Las Meninas
; he tasted the thick chocolate of La Mallorquina for the very first time; he taught the visitors typical expressions as well as how to drink wine out of an earthenware jug. Far from simply being a faithful guide for those three months, he also turned out to be of great help to those insatiable foreigners in practicing their Spanish once classes were concluded. He corrected their pronunciation of the letters
j
and
z,
clarified their subjunctives, proofread their essays, and, in short, made sure their stay turned out to be pleasant and fruitful.

Several weeks before they returned to the States, one of the ­professors—Sarah Bulton, the slender blonde who always wore pants and smoked nonstop, leaving a perpetual rim of scarlet on the filters—informed him that her university had set up a yearly program for bringing in foreign conversation assistants. If he was interested, she could
recommend him. In the event that he were to accept, besides teaching his own language, he would have the opportunity to take advantage of his year in America to learn English and continue with his education by enrolling in courses relevant to his major: linguistics, American history, comparative literature. At the end of the course he could return to his career in Madrid having seen a bit of the world and having acquired new experiences and acquaintances.

The Americans returned to their country toward the end of March loaded with beautiful fans, typical pottery, and espadrilles, unaware that they left behind an Andres Fontana whose perspective on the world had been altered for good. He would go to bed turning over the proposal in his mind and would wake up the following morning the same way. Leaving his mining village to move to the capital had been a big step, but accessible; crossing the ocean to stay at an American university seemed more like leaping over a chasm. Immense, but fascinating.

The spring of 1935 settled in calmly over Madrid as Andres prepared for the last stretch of his course work and impatiently awaited news from the program in Michigan. Four weeks after the Americans left, he received an envelope in the mail that Señora Antonia handed him on his return from the university. Despite the great anxiousness he felt on seeing it, he took it to his room, opened it, and pulled out the letter, sitting down to read it unhurriedly at the foot of his bed. It had been sent by the head of the Department of Classical and Romance Languages, who informed him that, given the highly favorable report that he had received from Professor Bulton, he had the pleasure of extending a formal invitation to take advantage of a grant within the Hispanic studies program at the university. Andres's responsibilities would include teaching fifteen hours of classes weekly and participating in something called the Spanish Club on Friday afternoons. In exchange, Andres would live on campus, receiving a small stipend for his expenses, and could enroll in as many courses as he wished, tuition free. If need be, the university could pay fifty percent of the trip's costs. His engagement would last for one academic year, beginning on September 1, 1935, and ending on May 31, 1936. The letter was written in perfect Spanish, neatly typewritten on ivory bond, and signed with an
emphatic stroke by Richard J. Taylor, PhD, Chairman. They needed to have Andres's answer by the end of the month.

Andres refolded the letter and slipped it back into the envelope, placing it in his inside jacket pocket before sitting down to lunch with the family, trying to hide his nervousness amid the conversation. As soon as he finished eating, he left the house and walked around aimlessly. When he returned at dusk he'd resolved his dilemma, but didn't tell anyone, and went straight to bed without dinner. The following morning he solemnly informed Señora Antonia of his decision while she hung the freshly washed sheets on the patio wire. He wrote a letter to his mother for Don Ramon to read to her.

On July 14, 1935, Andres embarked from the port of Cadiz on the
C
hristopher Columbus,
where his berth was located on the lowest deck for that journey to an immense unknown country. He initially planned to return to Spain in the summer of the following year once his classes had concluded, but an invitation to collaborate on a summer course for high school teachers made him change plans and postpone his return until the beginning of August 1936. He thought that with the extra money from that course he would be able to buy some clothing and modern appliances to take home as gifts.

That small change of plans irremediably altered his destiny, for in one of history's cruel tricks, he never returned. He remained in America with a shrunken soul and a suitcase full of new clothes, half a dozen cartons of American cigarettes, and four portentous GE electric irons. Señora Antonia, his mother, and his sisters would have to continue to spend long years ironing the old-fashioned way.

The civil war changed his country forever. Madrid prepared itself for a hard resistance and its physiognomy was radically transformed. The statue of Don Agustin de Argüelles that had greeted him each morning on leaving his caretaker's apartment on Calle Princesa was removed so as not to hinder the movement of troops and vehicles. The Hotel Palace ballroom where he had danced, led by a blond knockout, became a field hospital. At the beginning of the conflict, all University City facilities were in an advanced stage of construction, with some already finished and operational. However, the fresh paint, shiny win
dows, and recently varnished writing desks wouldn't last long. The bloody war would reduce a proud university to rubble, crushing as well a large part of its scientific, artistic, and bibliographic heritage, and forcing numerous members of its faculty toward the abyss of exile. As soon as Madrid fell, that ambitious monarchic dream of a magnificent American-style campus was brutally wiped out and its buildings reduced to frightful skeletons. Of the forty thousand trees that had been planted, only the roots remained. The area containing classrooms was occupied by trenches; the laboratories, by parapets. Barricades were erected using encyclopedias, dictionaries, and sandbags; rifles and bodies were ­scattered throughout the lecture halls and libraries.

Thousands perished, among them Marcelino, who had fallen in the Hospital Clinico with a shattered skull, lying facedown on the floor and carrying in the left-hand pocket of his combat jacket a crumpled half-written letter. In his childish scrawl he'd begun formulating a greeting intended for a destination far across the ocean: “Dear Friend Andres, I hope this letter finds you in good health . . .”

Chapter 7

W
ith the help of several graduate students, I had transferred the first batch of Andres Fontana's legacy from the storeroom to my office, heaping the boxes and piles against the wall. I had the feeling that I was finally beginning to rescue him from darkness.

From then on, his profile began to take shape before me as I directed a more human focus on his life. Everything made more sense now: his letters, his movements, his correspondence. Thus the days rolled by as I proceeded on a firm footing—or so I thought—on the straight path toward reconstructing my life. Until an unexpected call at the beginning of October made me stumble. It was Alberto, once more shattering the harmony.

We hadn't spoken to each other since the summer, before I had learned through David of his imminent paternity. In fact, as soon as I found out, it was I who dug in my heels and refused any type of contact whatsoever. I chose to avoid him, knowing that it would be painful to be confronted with the crudeness of the circumstances, like throwing acid on an open wound. Most likely Alberto had also understood and decided not to continue calling in order to spare me further suffering. Or perhaps he didn't understand and simply forgot about me, immersed as he was in his vital new project in a
refurbished loft with that young workmate who now was also his life mate.

It seemed a lifetime ago that Alberto and I had struggled so that he could take the examination to join the higher ranks of the civil service. For three grueling years we had made a coordinated effort with the aim of obtaining our objective. When we got married, neither of us had finished college. I was a semester and a half away, and he only had a couple of months to go. At the time we thought it wisest to concentrate our efforts on his professional career. Besides being a year ahead of me in the university, Alberto had a perfectly clear idea of what he wanted to do with his life: prepare for the public service exam as his father and brothers had. My future plans, on the other hand, were vaguer. In fact, they hardly existed. I liked languages, I liked books, I liked traveling. Undefined banalities, in short, with little hope of them soon materializing into some type of productive job that was moderately well paid. So Alberto, whose résumé was inferior to mine, devoted himself to studying. And I, meanwhile, put my humble aspirations aside and made sure our little family got ahead.

The success, naturally, was all his: he had prepared manically for the exam, obtaining his objective on the second round. Meanwhile, I neither took an exam, nor got any congratulations on passing, nor substituted professional garb for my old jeans and the thick wool sweaters that I knitted for myself on the run. But I did do other things that might have contributed, in at least a tangential way, to the triumph of my young and promising husband. While he memorized his laws and statutes locked in a room and wearing earplugs, isolated from everyday routines, I gestated, delivered, and brought up his two kids, and devoted myself night and day to making sure they didn't interrupt his much-needed quiet with their crying and childish protests. My life wore on, glued to a stroller carrying one baby while another baby was forming inside of me, through endless miles and hours seated on cold stone park benches. Later it was two boys that I led by the hand with their minute steps, picking them up from the ground when they fell, wiping their tears and noses, dealing with their cuts and bruises.

While my husband remained isolated in his legal bubble, ignorant
of domestic trivialities such as paying the rent and gas bill or buying eggs, chicken, and laundry detergent, I worked. Tutoring students while the kids had their naps or crawled on the floor in between my students' legs; translating medical texts with one hand while with the other I bottle-fed David; typing up indecipherable manuscripts with Pablo stuck to my breast. So that Alberto could study as I would have liked to be able to study myself.