A Corner of the World Read online

  A CORNER OF THE

  WORLD

  Mylene Fernández-Pintado

  Translated from the Spanish by Dick Cluster

  City Lights Books, San Francisco

  A CORNER OF THE WORLD

  Copyright © 2011 Mylene Fernández-Pintado

  English language translation copyright © 2014 Dick Cluster

  First published as La esquina del mundo by Ediciones Unión in 2011

  First City Lights Books edition, 2014

  All rights reserved

  Cover photograph: Paolo Gebhard

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Fernández Pintado, Mylene, 1963–

  [Esquina del mundo. English]

  A corner of the world / Mylene Fernández Pintado ; translated from the Spanish by Dick Cluster.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-87286-622-5

  I. Cluster, Dick, 1947– translator. II. Title.

  PQ7390.F436E8613 2014

  863’.64—dc23

  2014016994

  City Lights Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-87286-622-5

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-87286-653-9

  City Lights Books are published at the City Lights Bookstore

  261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133

  www.citylights.com

  For my parents, in the sky with diamonds.

  For Mauricio and Pablo, in the yellow submarine.

  . . . the name of a corner of the world where I would wait for you.

  —Pedro Salinas, La voz a ti debida

  I

  The mechanic poked his head out from under the car to berate me for being stupid, for letting myself get taken by the mechanic before him, who had also berated me for falling into the trap of the one before that. As always in such situations, I had two choices. One was to wholeheartedly agree, which would provoke a dialogue. The other was to adopt the shamefaced expression befitting a victim of countless members of the guild. That would lead to a monologue.

  My mother’s death had made me the sole heir of a car that, while inadequate by international standards, was satisfactory by our local ones. We are not very demanding in the matter of cars. My “brand-new” 1970 Moskvich was a treasure on wheels.

  “Are you a writer?” the mechanic asked.

  To mechanics, writers are people with clean hands and lots of money.

  To writers, mechanics are people with dirty hands and lots of money.

  My mother didn’t leave me any money, but she did leave some things of value: an upright piano and lots of sheet music. Her music. All I can do with the instrument is to put my hands on the keys and have them respond without much conviction. Still, out of all the objects she left that cluster indifferently around me, that piano feels the most my own.

  I also inherited a porcelain table setting, silverware that’s truly silver, and linen tablecloths. Also glassware of all sizes and sorts. Endless treasures that have no means of locomotion. We take care of them all our lives, and they almost always survive us.

  Also she left me a gaping void of loneliness, at the age of thirty-seven.

  What’s the net weight of a writer, I asked myself before replying to the question. The number of books? The number of prizes? The tally of foreign publishers? The crowd of reporters pursuing you? The quantity of gossip?

  “I’m no writer,” I told him while trying to understand what he was doing to the car and promising myself not to be deceived again.

  I don’t write stories, novels, or poetry. I don’t publish books, win prizes, or get interviewed anywhere. Nobody recognizes me on the street. Nobody snipes at me. That answer, I thought, would be true.

  “So what do you do?” The voice emerged from under the car, from the space lit by a crude lantern he must have invented himself.

  “I’m a Spanish language professor at the University.”

  I awaited the indifferent “Oh” of someone who has inquired merely to have something to say, but instead the mechanic wanted to know whether I liked my job.

  “No.”

  He poked his head out again, this time to confirm what is generally repeated here: That Moskviches had been produced by the youth of the Leninist Komsomol on Sundays of “volunteering.”

  “I teach first-year students,” I added, “which means my classrooms are full of geniuses who haven’t yet found out that what they’ll end up learning will serve to make them depressed at the sight of a decently turned phrase.”

  “And how do you get along with them?” continued the interview from underneath the car.

  “I think they think I’m very gray,” I said as if I knew what they would answer. “I don’t carry out projects with universities abroad, I don’t travel, I don’t know anyone who’s anyone in that world.”

  “So what? In the end, you’re the professor. Who cares?”

  “You’re right. None of it keeps me awake at night.” That was the truth, in fact.

  “The shape this car is in, you’re a brave girl driving it around. It’s a miracle you’re alive. Look at this steering.” He made that last comment for his own benefit, since I couldn’t see anything.

  “Yes, I’m very brave.” My point was that he shouldn’t see me as a damsel in distress and subject to swindles.

  Brave I am not. That’s why I’ve never written anything but class preparation notes. I’d be completely unable to come up with striking answers if I were asked about my next work in progress, or the literature being written on or off the Island, or how I manage to write with so much else to keep me busy.

  Other than the sacred profession of teaching, I don’t have anything to keep me busy. No animals, no plants. I have books, but they’ll stay alive even without dusting. I have a room of my own and all the time in the world. In other words, I’d have no excuse for not being a magnificent writer before even composing my first line.

  Those were my thoughts as I watched the decrepit Mosk­vich pant and hiccup at each touch of the mechanic, every time he tightened, loosened, or straightened anything.

  OLGA, MY BOSS, ASKED me to come see her after class. To talk. She did that often enough, convinced as she was that she could always assign me departmental tasks. I was the only one who hadn’t taken off on some ambitious personal pursuit. I prepared for class as if for catechism. During our boring staff meetings full of talk about requirements for the major, syllabi, the glowing futures of the School of Language and Literature and the Spanish tongue, I didn’t let my eyes stray to the clock. And as always, I was in no hurry to go home. I live nearby, and nothing awaited me but the voices on my answering machine, my point of contact with the rest of the world.

  Olga smiled maternally as I came into the office, assessing me with a glance. The severe eyeglasses on her appealing, plump face contrasted with her clothes of impressionist hues. I thought that Olga radiated vitality and serenity, like sunflowers or the sea. I smiled back and sat down.

  “Marian, sweetie, it’s been so long since we’ve talked. I know you’re deep in your work the way I wish the rest of the department would be, but don’t you think you ought to be projecting yourself a bit more toward the outside?”

  Since I was not sure how many kilometers were implied by the word “outside,” I envisioned a panorama that stretched from a modest provincial institution to the planet’s most exalted gathering of Hispanicists.

  “You know we’re always in touch with the Writers Union, the Book Institute, and the publishing houses. Many of our professors write.” Olga made a face that suggested none of them were any good. “Others do criticism or essays or study Literature for the benefit of audiences beyond their students. You’ve never shown any interest in that. You don’t know the authors of Literature except by hearing of them or exchanging occasional greetings. I haven’t wanted to push you, but lately I can’t get out of my head that it’s just your shyness getting in your way. So I feel guilty. If you haven’t done anything on your own initiative, I haven’t assigned you to do it either.”

  This prologue was full of truths, but I didn’t suppose she had summoned me just for us to wallow in our respective guilts. Since I was in agreement so far and wanted to know what was coming, I urged her onward with my eyes.

  “Here’s the book of a very young writer, without any literary background, who has won a prize for debut works.” She showed me a bound galley of a thin volume with an awful cover. “The

  head of the award committee has asked me to provide some words as a preface. The first press run will be five hundred copies, with presentations of the book around the country. The opening pages, the ones that will give the readers some orientation, will be yours. Tell me, sweetie, what do you think?”

  Olga is a forceful person who has taught Literature for decades, which explains why she talks like that. What she offered sounded to me like Gallimard, the Sorbonne, and a European tour. Which is to say, it was terrifying. But I told her I would do it. At least I’d have something to report to the mechanic next time, I said sarcastically to myself.

  My acceptance surprised her, but it fit her theory that my problem was shyness, not any lack of desire to step into that world. Her guilt mounted for not having made such a proposal before. She handed me the book. Its author was twenty-two and had written nothing else except a few poems—unpublished, I supposed.

  On the first page, she wrote down a phone number, “Because I’m sure it would be good for you to talk with him. You’ll wa
nt to ask him many things, and probably you’ll be the one to present the book to the public, at least here in Havana. It would good for you to be in contact from the get-go.”

  The Eskimo, by Daniel Arco, went into my purse. That day my pace quickened. I walked the way a writer of great prefaces would carry a great book through a city of subways, taxis, and broad sidewalks. I wanted to get right to work. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to manage it, but the only way to find out was to start trying.

  “The Eskimo” was also the title of one of the stories, which in truth was quite good. A man sunk in calculations about whether he could buy a mattress with one month’s pay wandered through the city during the uproar of August 5, 1994, that gave birth to the exodus of rafts and improvised boats. He walked amidst people running and shouting, the defense of order and the yen to exercise power, the violence of the situation and the more ordinary kind. Through the roiling streets of Havana on that unusual day, a passerby walked without knowing what was going on. He went over and over his figures and sums without taking in anything else.

  Though the story reminded me of one set during the Spanish Civil War, in which a shepherd searches for his goat amidst the conflict between nationalists and republicans, it still seemed quite good to me. It was written with care, especially considering that the writer was unsupplied with formal tools. He must have a grammar-teacher friend who corrects his language, I thought while making my first notes.

  The telephone rang quite a few times. I heard voices leaving messages but I didn’t want to stop what I was doing. At ten p.m. I decided I deserved a bottle of cheap red wine and went out to buy it.

  Since my mother died, I’ve sold many of the things around the house to an antique dealer, at prices I suppose are quite advantageous to him. Little by little, the contents of once-bursting chests and cabinets have turned into money. Money for eating something not on the ration book, or for dressing up and sipping inexpensive wine on holidays.

  I thought about calling Marcos to share the bottle.

  Marcos and I were together for a long time. When we broke up, we said we needed a break. People say that to leave the door open. If you don’t find someone else or someone better, you can go back to your ex without admitting you’ve been unable to make a new beginning.

  We hadn’t seen each other for over a year when we crossed paths at the phone company. I was paying my regular bill, while he was putting money into his cell phone account. After joyful hellos, he told me was involved with a Panamanian company that had to do with refrigeration and with a Panamanian woman in a less chilly way. He invited me to lunch, where he told me more about his good fortune, which I quickly associated with his having excised me from his life. Possibly he did too. Since everything went so well, we ended up making love. I told him that my mother had died and other than that everything was the same.

  I think that some way or other I communicated that I wasn’t interested in change. He took me home in his Toyota and we began seeing each other between his trips abroad. Things were much better that way. His failures were no longer my fault, and my few successes did not flow from his lucky star shining on my sad self. We were no longer an upstanding couple making their way in the world, but occasional lovers for whom nothing that happened was the other’s responsibility. We did better knowing less, so I decided not to call him to share the wine or the news.

  Instead I called my friend the scrivener.

  Sergio lives in do-it-yourself quarters on a rooftop in Old Havana. He writes by hand. He dots i’s and crosses t’s without his fingers ever touching a key. When he reaches the end, the final page does not glow on a screen or rest trapped in a typewriter roller, not even that of an old Underwood. Rather, he pens “The End” with a disposable ballpoint, a tiny gift from whomever, advertising some bar in Italy or Spain. He stacks up two hundred pages of newsprint paper filled with his tiny handwriting, ties them together with string, and adds them to the pile atop the only bureau in the only room of his house.

  His head is full of stories. They assail him at the least opportune times. They drag him from wherever he may be, home to his collapsing chair. They demand to be written down. Sergio doesn’t know what to do with all the stories in his head, on paper, carpeting the floor like autumn leaves, threatening to tumble from the top of the bureau. He’s ten times removed from prize contests, anthologies, translators, publishers, literary impresarios, critics, or journalists.

  He writes, and the writing relieves him as if he were easing heavy burdens from his back to the floor. He publishes in the obscure magazines of almost nonexistent towns, illegible supplements to free newspapers, magazines people buy to clean windows or wrap things up to put away.

  He gets paid almost nothing but keeps on writing, without caring to learn about outlets that pay nine thousand euros for a story or about the people who receive such largesse. Book launches and panels that mean airplane tickets, lodging, and tourism in places one would die to visit. Residencies in European castles, parties and cocktails paid for by a foundation. Bright lights, tinsel, and sequins. Fame and fortune, that marvelous duo of soft chords and resonant blessings, neither know nor care that in an improvised penthouse with a view of the sea someone goes on making literature because he has no other choice.

  We opened the bottle, and I told him I’d make dinner. He accepted with the proviso that he would buy the ingredients. This time I couldn’t talk him out of it. He came back with all the makings for a good pasta dish and then, happily, told me why.

  “I’ve got a job as a letter writer, like that guy in García Márquez. Well, only less romantic. The girls in my neighborhood have lots of international romances. They need to compose siren songs to attract their men across the sea, who now come in airplanes instead of boats. I write love letters for them.”

  “Love in this city. Under the blue and orange sky of the Malecón,” I intoned with some sarcasm. “Endless evenings that commence in restaurants, continue in discos, and conclude in rented rooms with air conditioning and lamps that switch off when you touch them.” We nodded in unison, knowing that our love affairs had never been like that.

  “They show up and tell me their stories. Some have fallen in love with the guys, some with the life they’re going to have. The rest are just calculating whether it will turn out to be a good investment. I transmute all that into love. Which, after all, is at the base of everything. Love of adventure, of the desire to leave, of eating delicatessen or owning a car, of going out shopping and becoming the mainstay of the rest of the family who are still here.” He told me all this as we ate.

  “At first I was doing it for free, but they insisted on paying me with presents or money. Some have gone, by now. They call or stop by when they come back for vacation. Others are still here, and they introduce me to their girlfriends who need the same thing. It seems like steady work . . . and no meetings.” That was his

  explanation. I felt my pasta had turned out pretty well for a change.

  While I did the dishes, Sergio read the first story in the book. He thought it was good. He remembered the Spanish tale I mentioned, but didn’t see much similarity between the two. He didn’t take the preface too seriously.

  “You’ll do a good job. I’ll read it when it’s done.”

  MARCOS CAME OVER TO show off his good fortune under the pretext of sharing it with me. He brought flowers, handing me a slender bouquet that seemed to have been picked from a meadow in some other latitude. It’s amazing, I thought, how even the flowers priced in dollars are better. These served as advance guard for a box of chocolates, which meant he was in condition to offer gifts both luxurious and impersonal. I don’t like chocolate, and my preferred flowers are white daisies of the “he loves me, he loves me not” variety. I thought Marcos would remember that, but I savored the fact that he didn’t. It meant I could have the advantages that came with still knowing who he was, along with those that came with him barely remembering me. So he’s both a known quantity and a stranger, I said to myself as we got into bed.

  As important as the steps before making love are those you carry out when you’re done. Smokers have it easiest: They light up and look at the ceiling. Fleeting lovers look at their watches and hurry up their departures, faced with the distress or indifference, whether real or feigned, of their partners.