All Roads Lead to Austen: A Year-long Journey with Jane

by Amy Elizabeth Smith

  Before time and circumstances sent the Smith kids in different directions, we four spent many happy afternoons like millions of other youngsters raised in the sixties and seventies: playing Monopoly. At the celebration for Saint Cecilia, Diego had shared something quintessentially Mexican with me, something meaningful from his childhood. I wanted to share something other than Austen with him. Something 100 percent American, something from my Pennsylvania past. So I taught him how to play Monopoly.

  Even in the Mexican version I’d bought, no game says “USA!” like Monopoly. The board’s center was an attractive Aztec calendar, all the properties grouped by state. The good folks from the state of Guanajuato might not be too happy to know they housed the cheapie purple properties while Mexico City landed pride of place with the costly blue ones. Boardwalk was el Palacio de Bellas Artes, and Park Place, el Castillo de Chapultepec. The railroads transformed into the Centro de Autobuses. I hadn’t played in a good twenty years and needed to consult the rules, but it all came back pretty quickly. I explained to Diego the central challenge of the game: the need to buy property while retaining enough capital to develop it so that you can then bleed your opponents dry.

  Diego’s good nature did not serve him well in Monopoly. It looked promising when he bought the third yellow property after I had the first two, but that was as cutthroat as he got. Since Puerto Vallarta is in the state of Jalisco, it was only fitting that I completed this block first, those red properties that everybody lands on. Diego looked distressed when he saw my money disappearing into the bank, just like on shopping trips when he’d catch me buying yet another brightly colored blanket or irresistible owl statue. “Mi amor,” he asked, “are you sure you need that many houses?”

  His distress changed to stunned denial the first time he landed on the Plaza de Liberación with three houses. How on earth could the rent go from $20 to $750? Now the money that had drained from my stash into the bank began flowing from Diego’s stash back to mine. I had tried to explain the principle of investments and returns, but only cold hard reality could teach that lesson. When he counted out the crushing rent a second time, I held a hand flat out, palm up, signaling “gimmee gimmee gimmee!” with my fingers—just like big brother Shawn would always do to his beleaguered siblings, so many years ago on the orange shag rug of our family den.

  Diego was crushed. Who was this woman, this cruel capitalist gringa, and what had she done with his bookish, impractical girlfriend?

  The handwriting was on the wall for his first Monopoly venture. It was getting late, and I was still more tired than usual, so we packed it up. He swore that he’d enjoyed it and would play with his family. But in the land of mi casa es tu casa—and when they say it in Mexico, they really mean it—a game where you charge your loved ones eye-popping rents until they collapse financially may not be quite the thing. For me, the game had been a wonderful trip down memory lane, bringing back rainy Pennsylvania afternoons, Velveeta sandwiches, Shawn’s maniacal laughter over each property acquisition, and debates over why the mice that visited the box at night only chewed the hundred dollar bills.

  None of these layers of memory were there for Diego as he’d watched me fuss over the precise arrangement of the houses multiplying in my tiny empire. And anyway, he could never catch up. It was El Mariachi Loco, in reverse. The second time he played Monopoly would be my forty-second; his fifth, my forty-fifth.

  Stacking the bills back in the box, I smiled over at him. He sighed and smiled back.

  ***

  Good-byes are a long process in Mexico, so I started mine shortly after the celebration for Saint Cecilia. One by one I visited Diego’s family members, thanking them for all their help during my lingering illness. Warm as ever, full of good wishes for the rest of my travels, one by one they asked the same thing—when would I be back?

  A very good question, but one I couldn’t answer yet. The fact was that over the past month, Diego had begun urging me to return to Puerto Vallarta—for good. His existence was completely woven into the fabric of the city where he’d lived his whole life. During a family dinner when someone had asked me about life in the United States, Diego’s mother, seated next to me, suddenly turned to clutch my arm. “Please don’t take my son away,” she’d said quietly but with a depth of feeling that left me speechless.

  I’d already uprooted myself from western Pennsylvania, but now I had a secure, tenured university position in California that had taken me years to earn. Could I give that up on the chance that things might work out between us long term? And what about the rest of the year’s travels? Ecuador, Chile, Paraguay, and Argentina still lay ahead. Could we maintain a relationship over such time and distance?

  The thought of leaving Diego, of traveling on without him, of not waking up beside him, of not hearing his happy laughter each and every day, made my stomach churn with fear. But how much of that was fear of being alone, of the unknown, and how much was about him, specifically? I’d known when I arrived in Mexico that I would have to turn around and leave again—how had I managed to get in so far over my head?

  Feeling helpless and overwrought, I went to an Internet café to check my email, hoping for a bit of cheer from friends and family in the States. Instead I was hit with the hardest type of good-bye—the kind you don’t get to say in person. Nora, who’d organized the Guatemala Austen group, had stayed in touch by email. She tried to break the news gently, but there was no way to say it except just to say it.

  Luis, that sharp-tongued lover of literature, was dead.

  “We were all sad at the school to hear that he passed away suddenly,” Nora wrote. “It was really shocking! And such a shame.” It turns out that Luis was diabetic. I immediately remembered the trip to the store I’d taken with him on our last day—to buy a fifth of rum. Damnation, Luis.

  And what about his books? Luis had told me what an odd fish he was to his relatives, a life-long bachelor surrounded not by children and grandchildren but by hundreds and hundreds of books. What would his family make of them; what would they do with them? Someone I’d never met would come and carry off the translation I’d given him of Pride and Prejudice. Had he enjoyed it? The copy of Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory that I’d sent from Mexico a month earlier—was it there, too, among the piles? Had he read it? Had he liked it?

  In the small private courtyard of the café, I had a long, hard cry. I couldn’t help but lament all of the wonderful, challenging conversations—about Austen, about Spanish, about life and literature—that I’d never get to have with Luis. Antigua, when I returned, would not be the same without him.

  ***

  The night before leaving Mexico, I tried to work up the nerve for a Relationship Talk with Diego. I usually didn’t have trouble with this kind of conversation; I wasn’t sure why I was finding it so difficult just then. When Diego saw me looking earnest over dinner, he asked what was on my mind. “You’re still not feeling well, are you? Or are you thinking about your friend who died?”

  “I’m still run down, but I’m getting used to that by now.”

  “Then what’s wrong?”

  “Well, it’s just that I wanted to talk about”—I fidgeted with my spoon—“about this visit, about where I’m going from here. About…Austen. You don’t know how much I appreciate your help with all of the planning and rescheduling!”

  Chicken.

  “It was fun!” he responded. “You know how much I love to read, but I’ve never done anything like this. Knowing we’d talk about the book with other people made me think a lot more about it.” He reached over and grasped my hand firmly across the table. “Didn’t the groups turn out the way you planned?”

  “It was a shame about splitting into two but aside from that, I’m very pleased,” I reassured him.

  But even as I responded, I was struck with the answer to my reticence, because there was something that had
n’t turned out the way I’d planned—Diego and I. Before I’d arrived, I’d imagined that we’d stay in touch via email but that I’d move on, that he’d meet another woman in his taxi or out dancing, or maybe on the beach or at church. I had never imagined that I’d develop such feelings for him, that he’d want me to move back, that the thought of leaving this warm, patient, loving man would make me feel like I was about to head for Antarctica, not the equator. Was there any way we could work things out after all? Could we actually find a way to be together in the end?

  To disguise the depth of my concerns, I avoided his eyes and dodged back into Austen. “Anyway, I didn’t really have anything specific planned for the groups, although I was curious about one thing. Lots of Americans tend to relate to Austen very personally, and I wondered if you and your friends would do the same.”

  “Wasn’t that funny about Josefa and Juan’s older daughter?” He caught my meaning immediately. “There’s plenty of reason to think that things with Marianne and Colonel Brandon will work out just fine, but those two were both thinking about their daughter’s older husband.”

  “Salvador brought up some points about parenting I’d never considered before, as many times as I’ve read Sense and Sensibility. That really struck me. He also spent more time talking about being honorable, on the value of being a good person.”

  “Salvador is one of the best men I know—you can trust him completely. And you can see what good parents he and Soledad are. If your students don’t have kids, it’s no wonder they don’t bring that up. They’re not going to think so much about parenting.”

  I carried a handful of dishes to the sink. Time for me to ’fess up to my latest cultural cluelessness. “There is another thing that surprised me. I guess I was going on stereotypes about Mexicans, but somehow, I thought you’d all like Marianne better than Elinor,” I admitted. “She’s much more emotional, warm, and spontaneous. That’s the image Americans have of Mexicans, you know. That you’re all passionate and crazy, that Mexican men are always getting into knife fights over women, that Mexican women are hanging out on their balconies or running off to war to follow their lovers. Marianne thought dying for love was the best way to go!”

  “Only until she almost did,” he laughed. “Well, Mexico’s a big country. Maybe if you read the book with more people, you’d find some fans for Marianne. It’s true we’re passionate, but the problem with Marianne was the selfishness. We care about love, but we care about family even more. When you’re hurting your family, that’s no good.”

  Diego took over at the sink, washing the dishes while I leaned against the counter. “I’ve thought a lot about what you said on feminism that night,” I told him. “The women in Guatemala liked how intelligent and strong Lizzy is in Pride and Prejudice, but nobody brought up feminism specifically. At first, I couldn’t see how Austen focusing on domestic life and personal interactions was feminist, because getting women out of the house is exactly what so much feminism in the United States has emphasized. But I think I see what you mean more clearly now. Austen gave value to something that was undervalued—the daily lives of women, the things that mattered to them. In fact, there’s a famous feminist from the States who argued that the personal is political.”

  “Really?” he asked, looking pleased with himself.

  “Really.”

  “Will you read Sense and Sensibility with any of the other groups?” He abruptly turned his attention to the sink, piling glasses precariously and struggling to fit the last plate into the strainer. Men are supposedly better at spatial relations, but I’ve found that doesn’t apply to dishes. Then again, given the sudden tense set of his shoulders, maybe he too was agitated about all the things that weren’t getting said that night.

  As he turned, I saw the solemn look on his candid face—his mention of the other groups raised the unavoidable topic of my going. Shame on me. I’d been so caught up in my own feelings, it hadn’t occurred to me that he might be just as unhappy as I was.

  I resituated his big scary tower of glasses and secured the plate, then took him by the hand. “We’ll read Sense and Sensibility in Chile this spring, after I leave Ecuador. I’m reading each book twice this year to see what kinds of similarities and differences come up. I’ll let you know what Chileans think of Marianne. But right now, I’d rather think about the azotea.”

  There it was, back again, that smile of his I loved so much. Diego was the one, after all, who’d taught me that “to worry” in Spanish was preocupar—to be occupied with something before we need to be. Tomorrow I would be gone. There was no way to know how we would feel about maintaining a relationship down the road until I was down the road.

  No sense worrying about tomorrow, tonight.

  In which the author goes to Guayaquil to visit a stranger who becomes a friend, buys even more books, suffers a setback in her Spanish, solves a few mysteries left over from Mexico, including The Case of the Itchy Red Rash, celebrates Austen’s birthday in Iguana Central, meets a bonus reading group, and, best of all, joins an ongoing reading circle of fascinating folks to discuss Pride and Prejudice.

  Chapter Seven

  Usually I need very strong coffee to wake up. My first morning in Guayaquil, the view from the twelfth-floor balcony was enough. If I hadn’t known the Guayas was a river, I would have sworn it was the ocean. Dotted with islands and fishing boats, it stretched as far as the eye could see, flowing powerfully, serenely to the Pacific nearly fifty miles south. I’d arrived well after dark the night before, so this first stunning vista was my introduction to my new home for the next month.

  “The pirate port of Guayaquil,” the city is often called in books on Latin American history, and that tantalizing phrase was half the reason I’d wanted to visit. Apparently for centuries every time the good citizens got their houses built and their gardens planted and their curtains hung just so, French and English pirates would sweep through to burn and rape and pillage. At the far left of my balcony vantage point was Cerro Santa Ana, St. Anne’s Hill, from which citizens would mount watch for the marauders so they could save their skins, if not their possessions. In today’s Guayaquil rows of brightly painted houses wind their way up the steep hill, crowned by a picturesque lighthouse.

  Directly below the balcony and stretching for blocks along the river was the Malecón, a boardwalk even more elaborate and attractive than the one in Puerto Vallarta. Back at the turn of the millennium, the city gave it a complete face lift and now, along with the broad river walkway itself, the Malecón hosts gardens, museums, restaurants, upscale shops, and an indigenous artisans’ market.

  Pirates aside, I’d picked Guayaquil for an Austen group thanks to that classic traveler’s resource, the friend-of-a-friend. Betsy, an American who’d married an Ecuadorian, had agreed to arrange the Guayaquil Austen venture. She’d managed to locate an ongoing reading group willing to add Pride and Prejudice to its December schedule. I was eager to see what perspectives on Austen Guayaquileños might have in common (or not) with Guatemalans.

  I’d arrived gruesomely late the night before, but Betsy was as energetic and upbeat as her emails had led me to expect. A blue-eyed blond in her late sixties dressed casually but stylishly, she’d been easy to spot in the crowd at arrivals. She’d whisked me off then set me up in the apartment next to hers, one she and her husband also owned. That next morning when she invited me over for breakfast, I was still on the balcony taking in the singular view.

  “This is just the most fascinating thing you’re doing, reading Austen in different countries!” she said as she poured coffee. “I’m sorry I can’t join you, but I know you’ll enjoy both groups!”

  This was news to me on two counts—“can’t join you” and “both groups.” I started with the first. “Why can’t you join us?”

  “We spend December at our house on the coast. Our grandchildren love the beach. We want you to come, too, eve
ry weekend, if you can! You’ll love it!”

  Then she handed me a sheet of paper with names and phone numbers, clarifying the “both groups.”

  “The first group I call ‘Mrs. Gardiner.’” Betsy smiled at her own whimsy, a reference to Lizzy Bennet’s kind, accommodating aunt. “They’re all very warm, very smart. The other one I call ‘Lady Catherine.’ I’m not saying they’re snobs—they’re just a ritzier group, but they’re very well read and interesting. Ignacio José coordinates both. You should talk to him first.”

  Ignacio José was, I discovered, a genteelly starving artist, a very talented offbeat writer paid by the groups to serve as a facilitator and literary critic.

  “I only mailed six copies of the book,” I said, mentally tallying the readers now involved.

  “Mrs. Gardiner has them. I think Lady Catherine bought their own. Actually, even the six you sent almost didn’t get here. The customs people assumed we were going to sell them. Why else would anybody want six copies of the same book? They tried to charge extra taxes, and my husband was so mad, he said, ‘Fine, if you think they’re so valuable, sell them yourselves!’ So they let them through.”

  Soledad from the reading group back in Mexico had been curious about the degree of fame Austen achieved in her lifetime—and while Austen lived to see public acclaim, in her wildest dreams she could never have imagined that nearly two hundred years after her death, in a country of steamy jungles and skyscraping mountains half a globe away, men would be arguing in a crowded post office about a Spanish translation of her dear Pride and Prejudice.