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

by Amy Elizabeth Smith

  Betsy then handed me several books. I hadn’t mentioned via email that I wanted reading recommendations in each country, but she’s such a devoted booklover she couldn’t resist sharing.

  “These authors are Ecuadorians,” she said. “You’ll learn a lot about the culture from them!”

  Edna Iturralde was one and the other, Alicia Yánez Cossío. I tucked the books into my backpack purse, thanking her for getting me started on my newest course of reading.

  Since Betsy and her husband were renovating the adjoining apartment, my night there had been a stopgap measure; I’d be spending the month in a comfortable back room in their office suite two blocks away. After helping me lug my fat suitcases the short distance, Betsy handed over the keys.

  One of the secrets of long-term travel is to make every temporary abode feel like home, so I set about nesting. In Mexico I’d acquired more things than I could possibly haul away; most I’d left with Diego and his family. The items I’d kept were favorites—a violet-purple blanket adorned with multicolored fish, an owl statuette with huge, mournful eyes, a bird tile I used as a coaster. Last but not least was Diego’s gift, Señor Guapo the stuffed Chihuahua—a poor substitute for Diego himself, but seeing it always brought back happy memories of the day he’d brought it home to me.

  I found spots in my new room for each familiar item, and things seemed cozier already. Too bad there weren’t roosters outside to greet me as there had been in Mexico—although over the course of the month I heard men pretending to be roosters on three occasions as the local bar shooed customers out for closing time (then again, maybe it was one man, three times).

  Homestead established, I stopped at an Internet café to email Diego. There was already a message from him wishing me a safe arrival. I wrote a quick reply, afraid that if I lingered too long over how much I wished he were there with me right then, I’d end up in tears.

  I also let my mother know I’d made it safe and sound. The easy part of the café transaction was paying for it, since Ecuador uses U.S. currency, including the Sacajawea dollars that mysteriously disappeared from U.S. circulation. Understanding the clerk was not so easy. Here was a whole new version of Spanish, rapid and contracted, the ends of words often disappearing entirely. A useful phrase like más o menos, for instance, which means “more or less,” turns into a single blur of máomeno.

  I was reduced to the old trick of smiling, faking comprehension, and handing over a bill undoubtedly large enough to cover the total. Oh, boy—demoted to rank amateur in Spanish once more, unable to carry out the simplest transaction after months of work and slow but steady improvement.

  The call in English had gone better. My mother picked up on the second ring, no doubt waiting anxiously since I’d left Mexico. She was pleased I’d made it safely to a new continent, but concern about new dangers surfaced quickly: “I heard on TV about an American farmer getting bit by a vampire bat. They said it came up from South America.”

  I could tell from the slight echo that she was using the speakerphone in her bedroom. I could just see her, seated on the bed, which was part of the suite she and my dad had scrimped to buy as newlyweds. The burgundy wood headboard, dresser, and vanity set, meticulously well cared for, had gone from serviceable in the fifties to dated by the seventies to stylishly retro for the new millennium.

  Aside from a short stint in Vermont when my father was in the Air Force, my mom had lived her whole life within a fifteen-mile radius of the house where she was born (and I do mean house; my German grandmother considered hospital births a luxury). What had my kind, loyal mother done to deserve a daughter who couldn’t manage to stay put? Who flung herself in the path of tropical diseases, battling street dogs, and winged death in the form of bats?

  “I’ve seen lots of pigeons here and some seagulls, too—but no bats. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful!”

  ***

  Ecuador was where Charles Darwin put two and two together on a few important issues when he visited the Galapagos Islands, roughly five hundred miles off the Ecuadorian mainland. My own discoveries weren’t quite so dramatic, but it was satisfying for a woman raised on Nancy Drew to finally solve The Bookstore Mystery.

  Back in Puerto Vallarta I’d been befuddled every time I asked for a title and the clerk, whether cheerful Marisol or the grim ghost of Pedro Páramo, would pull copies from various shelves around the shop—never from the same location.

  That December morning in Guayaquil, when I asked the clerk for Jane Austen novels in Spanish and he began the now-familiar dash from one area of shelving to another, I blurted out impatiently, “Why do you have to look in more than one place?!”

  My out-of-left-field bitchy tone stopped him cold, probably more than the question. Arm poised in midair reaching for a book, he stared in injured surprise.

  “I’m so sorry!” I apologized, appalled at my own behavior. “I don’t feel well.” I was still frustratingly weak and tired—but I also felt genuinely irritated that I’d arrived in yet another country with an unfathomable system for organizing books. My mother was a librarian, for cryin’ out loud. I was supposed to be good at this stuff!

  He shrugged and laughed, saying something that resembled “Don’t worry!” Then he handed me a copy of La Abadía de Northanger. Grateful for his patience and his Austen discovery, I repeated more calmly, “Why aren’t all the Austen titles in the same place?”

  It took me one more try to understand his accent, but finally the light bulb went on. Organized by publisher. It should have dawned on me sooner, but I just couldn’t get my head around it.

  “Why do you do that?” I asked.

  He shrugged again and said, predictably, “Why not?”

  So you don’t have to look in five places for one title? Because most people care about the author, not the publisher? I was incapable of responding without sounding like a harpy, so I didn’t. A core value of multiculturalism holds that there’s no such thing as good or bad when it comes to cultures—just “different.” On child labor laws and women’s rights, I simply don’t buy that, as much as I want to be open to difference. Shelving books isn’t exactly a high-stakes venture, but I also didn’t see myself returning to the States at the end of the year and reorganizing my books by publisher.

  Still, I was pleased to finally know the lay of land and move on to safer territory: my standard request for reading suggestions.

  “Nineteenth century?” The clerk’s response had more words in it than that, but those were the ones I got. He handed me a volume published by Libresa, plucked from its rightful spot, by local standards, next to all of the other Libresa titles—Cumandá by Juan León Mera. “Classic,” “school,” “Indians,” and “jungle” were four key words I picked out of his recommendation.

  Deciding it was time to retreat to my room before my crankiness resurfaced, I thanked him and turned to pay for my books, but he took them from me with a smile. Patience, I urged myself, as he carried the books to a counter where he handed them to a clerk. The clerk wrote down the titles on a piece of paper, which she stamped and handed to me. Then she carried the books to a different counter by the store entrance, directing me to yet another counter. WTF?! My stamped slip had a dollar figure on it, so this must be the place to pay. I handed over cash, and Clerk Number Two stamped the slip again. Reporting with my stamped paper to the counter by the store entrance, I was finally rewarded with my books by Clerk Number Three.

  What is this, the Soviet frickin’ Union?

  My head throbbing, feeling dangerously close to tears, I sat down outside on a doorstep to collect myself. So Ecuadorian bookstores are slow as molasses, so what? What on earth was wrong with me? Was I afraid to look like a dummy navigating the Byzantine sales system? Was I embarrassed at the setback with my Spanish?

  Maybe it really was physical. But could I still be ill after so many weeks? Or was I losing it witho
ut Diego? Was I turning into a whiny hypochondriac because I missed his calming influence, his perpetual cheer?

  There are few Austen characters less attractive than her hypochondriacs. The best known is Mrs. Bennet, with her “nerves,” and Mary Musgrove of Persuasion is a royal pain, too. Emma Woodhouse’s father is more endearing since at least he’s equally worried on others’ behalf, but in Austen’s world, dubious health complaints are often shorthand for “Loser!” Apparently Austen’s mother was prone in this direction. There are lots of theories as to why Austen’s sister Cassandra burned so many of Jane’s letters after she died; making sure that none of Austen’s (no doubt hilarious) commentary on their mother’s complaints survived is one of the more probable ones.

  I didn’t want to be an Austen Loser, but whatever the problem, I needed a nap. I stopped in a grocery store for some staples, deciding that a bit of chocolate wouldn’t hurt either.

  “You is beautiful, beautiful,” a man’s voice crooned in English just behind me. Knowing I was the only gringa in the small store, I refused to turn around.

  “You beautiful, beautiful!”

  I bought only half of what I wanted just to get the hell home before I bit somebody’s head off. I placed the checkout divider between my items and those of the man behind me. The clerk reached over and placed it back in the slot running along the counter. “That’s to show the counter is closed,” he said.

  I picked it up and set it behind my groceries again, pointing to the side that now faced him, which said “cerrado.” “This side means your counter is closed. The side with the cigarette ad separates your groceries from the next person’s.”

  “People don’t understand. They’ll think I’m closed,” he answered, reaching for it. I slapped my hand onto the divider, glaring until he looked away, then turned to the man in line behind me.

  “You understand that this divides our groceries, correct?”

  Clearly in the presence of a loca, a pasty white fiend from the north, the man simply nodded, also refusing to make eye contact. The clerk silently resumed ringing up my goods.

  And I walked out of the store and straight into a nearby emergency clinic I’d noticed that morning, groceries and all.

  ***

  “How long have you been sick?” the doctor asked me, shining a tiny light into my ears.

  “More than five weeks. My head is pounding, and I have no energy.” And no patience.

  Looking into my throat, he grunted one of those “this doesn’t look good” noises. He felt the glands in my throat and said, “You’ve got a really bad infection. Your entire throat is swollen and covered with pus. I’m going to give you an oral antibiotic and an injection, too, to get something into your system as fast as possible. I want you to come back tomorrow for blood work and a throat culture.”

  Armed with antibiotics, my tail end throbbing from the shot, I headed back to the office for my nap. On the bright side, they hadn’t leeched or bled me. Watching Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility, my students always groan when they see poor fevered Marianne at the mercy of early nineteenth-century medicine. I tried to be optimistic that the antibiotics would work this time, but it was hard not to be worried after so many exhausting weeks of illness. Could this possibly be the same fever that had floored me in Mexico, or had I picked up something new?

  Or maybe…it was travel stress. Maybe I just didn’t have what it takes, after all, to spend a whole year on the road.

  That was a grim thought.

  Whatever my problem was, I had to keep any complaints from my mother. She’d definitely make herself ill, too, if she knew I was still in such bad shape. Sleep—that’s what I needed. I was out as soon as I hit the bed, still clothed.

  ***

  Waking hours later, I felt a little stronger and less panicky. I was in an intriguing new country, and if I didn’t exactly feel like strolling the streets, I had books.

  Among Betsy’s recommendations was a historical novel by Alicia Yánez Cossío: Sé Que Vienen a Matarme (I Know They’re Coming to Kill Me). Born in 1928, Cossío is one of Ecuador’s most respected novelists. Sé Que Vienen a Matarme traces the life of Gabriel García Moreno, president of Ecuador between 1861 and 1875. While the Catholic Church has wielded political power throughout Latin America for centuries, Moreno established the only full-fledged theocracy, stripping non-Catholics of citizenship. He tortured and killed political enemies with a fury he felt was backed by the wrath of an angry god, although he also made important improvements to Ecuador’s educational system. Still, his cruelty was so severe that when several would-be assassins converge on him on the same day—working independently, no less—you’re rooting for whoever gets there first. Turns out it’s the man wielding the machete rather than the ones with pistols.

  I called Betsy to let her know I was enjoying her recommendations so far but had to bow out on spending that weekend at the beach with her family.

  “I’m so sorry you’re feeling sick! Keep in touch by phone so we know how you’re doing.”

  I was determined to see more of Guayaquil, illness notwithstanding. A few days later I made arrangements to meet Ignacio José, the literary guru who coordinated the two reading groups and who was, according to Betsy, “quite a character!”

  Arriving ten minutes early at the agreed-upon spot in a square facing one of Guayaquil’s historic churches, I circled the area, noticing the contrast between the beautiful façade of the church and the uninspired mid-twentieth-century architecture of the surrounding buildings, including some U.S. fast-food chains. The Malecón area is striking, but the farther you get from the water, the more things seem to be built for use, not style. Then again, I was probably being harsh by comparison—Antigua is famous for its beautiful colonial architecture, and Puerto Vallarta had been completely colored by the rosy glow of Diego’s company.

  As I paced the square I began to realize I was drawing stares, so I found a spot on a bench next to two older women sharing a newspaper. They returned my “buenas tardes” with curious looks. I was the only gringa in sight, as I had been in the grocery store. Antigua and Puerto Vallarta are tourist destinations; Guayaquil is not. It’s the jumping off point for the Galapagos Islands, but few tourists spend time hanging around the city, which has a reputation for more crime than Quito and other parts of Ecuador. More than once I was followed for blocks by taxis honking and persistently offering their services, the drivers apparently unable to believe I meant to be on foot, alone.

  I waited forty-five minutes past my meeting time with Ignacio José then, growing tired of the stares, some idle, some flirtatious, some less friendly, I gave up. I stopped by the clinic to see if the blood work I’d had taken on my second visit was done yet. No such luck. Grrr. An hour after I’d popped more ibuprofen for my pounding head, the phone rang. Ignacio José, apologetic, with a strange and rambling excuse for his lateness. Would I give him a second chance?

  He came to fetch me at the apartment, and I had no trouble recognizing him from Betsy’s description. He was Starving Artist incarnate—tall, thin, shoulders stooped from hovering over books and writing desks, with light, thinning hair, a lopsided smile and bright, burning eyes. If I hadn’t known he was Ecuadorian, I’d have sworn he was Dutch; while the indigenous population of the country is very large, there are Europeans in the mix, and not just Spaniards.

  “What a pleasure to meet you! I know you’ll forgive me when you hear what happened!” He was off to the races with a story, different from his original phone version, about having slept in after being awake all night writing—surrounded by silence, in the throes of literary passion, consumed by the drive to create, etc.

  Aside from a few practical tidbits about plots and settings, we don’t know much about Austen’s thoughts on writing as a vocation, but it’s pretty clear she wasn’t a suffering artiste type. Compared to colorful contemporaries like
Mary Wollstonecraft, Lord Byron, and Percy Shelley, whose extremely public private lives were as dramatic as any of their literary creations, Austen was very dull indeed. From what evidence we have, she treated writing as a craft to be mastered, not a painful primal drive. She was an artist, not an artiste. The romanticized modern image of a writer as tormented by creative urges has its origins in the era when Austen was publishing, but I could well imagine the sort of cutting witticism she’d drop on the subject: If one finds it so draining to write, a search for a more invigorating profession might be in order. Clergymen seem to live comfortably enough.

  The erring Ignacio José promised me a sight that would erase any lingering pique over being stood up, and he delivered. He took me to the Parque Bolivar. Flanked by Guayaquil’s cathedral and national museum, this park is better known by its nickname—Parque Iguana. Hanging from the trees, lounging in the sun, iguanas populate the park in the hundreds. How Diego would have loved the sight of them! If a park had that many squirrels in it I’d think twice about entering, as much as I adore squirrels. But iguanas are mellow creatures, and while they’ll accept lettuce if you offer it, they won’t chase you or mistake your fingers for food. They will, however, pee (or worse) on the unwary, so you need to be on your guard when passing under trees.

  Ignacio José quickly won me over with good-natured banter, exciting tales of travel, and descriptions of his work. Whether more artist or artiste, I couldn’t say, but he was endlessly entertaining. “I adore performance art. Would you like to hear about my Clitoris?” Laughing at his own mischief, he continued, “The clitoris is wise, so in my piece, I was an Oracle. I dressed as a clitoris and answered the burning questions of all the spectators!”