All Roads Lead to Austen

by Amy Elizabeth Smith

  They all seemed taken aback—not that I’d given them presents, as Guatemalans are great gift givers, but that these Austen items existed. I tried to explain about Janeites, those devotees who write sequels, set up websites, hold dances and tea parties. The ladies could understand the novels themselves being popular, but since the notion that anything people like is ripe for marketing hasn’t taken hold in Guatemala, they remained puzzled but pleased about the fan toys. Needless to say, I never ran across any “I’d rather be reading Milla” bumper stickers or Miguel Asturias coffee mugs.

  But now came the beginning of the end, because Flor did have to go. I was so happy she had been in the group, keeping things light with her musical laughter.

  “Que te vayas bien,” she smiled, departing with a kiss and a hug. This friendly send-off translates literally as “go well,” but the idea is more a general wish that things work out smoothly for you, that your trip (whether one block to your home or 3,000 miles to Chile) is all you hope it will be.

  “You’re going to learn so much when you travel in South America,” Mercedes said, giving me a hug. “When you come back, my home is your home. You just tell us when you’re ready to return!” She hailed a tuk-tuk, one of Antigua’s noisy little golf cart taxis, with space for two passengers (or three, if you really like each other). On the rutted cobblestone streets a trip in a tuk-tuk is like riding on a donkey running at top speed, but they’re cheap and popular. “Hasta pronto!” she called out, disappearing into the night.

  Since Élida had back problems and couldn’t ride a speeding donkey, Nora and Ani were going to walk her home then catch a tuk-tuk themselves, heading south while I went north. Nora and I had lunch plans for the next day, but I knew it would be quite some time before I’d see Élida and Ani again. “I’m so glad you liked the novel,” I told them, “and I’m so happy I could talk with you about it!” If only I had more eloquence in Spanish to show them how much I appreciated their insights, their ideas, their personal stories, their laughter, sharing a chummy girls’ night out.

  But I think they could tell—we don’t only communicate with language.

  “I’m not sure exactly when, but I will be back,” I promised earnestly. “And with better Spanish!”

  ***

  That final Sunday morning, as I waited at the café for Nora to join me, I enjoyed the memory of how well the group had gone. But I also thought about the price. For weeks, Nora confessed, she’d had to steal moments for Austen, because she shared her house with twenty people. Twenty. Guatemalans take care of each other—so if your sister needs to move in with you, you let her, without staring at the calendar and waiting for her to move along. Austen would have approved. This means that cousins get to know each other better and are often more like sisters and brothers.

  It also means that both privacy and time for books are a luxury. How can you read with a houseful of people who want to be fed, to have their clothes washed, to visit and talk? To finish the book, Nora had to wake up before anybody else, hide in her cubicle during the coffee breaks at La Escuela, and come home an hour later than usual, lingering in the school gardens to see if Darcy would lighten up, if Lizzy would learn about Wickham’s lies, if Bingley would come back to Jane.

  And me, swooping down on my big year’s adventure. I’d been, quite frankly, clueless. I had no idea what I was asking when I invited Nora and the others for the book group. I assumed everybody had plenty of time to lounge around with Austen. In my defense, this was a mix of cross-cultural cluelessness with ain’t-got-no-kids cluelessness. A fellow soltero like Luis could make his way through stack after bedside stack of books. But people with families—especially extended families—were hard-pressed to justify time for Jane Austen when dinner’s not ready and a daughter, son, nephew, or niece scrapes a knee and needs a hug. Even the time to see me off was one more small theft from Nora’s loved ones.

  “So, we didn’t get to talk about your daughter’s wedding last night,” I said when she arrived, her usual bright, bustling self.

  “Oh, it was lovely. But,” she added, looking pained, “the groom’s family is a bit…well, they’ve got more money than us. We worked so hard to make everything nice, but for some of them, it wasn’t enough. People here can be really critical about things, about the dresses, the dishes, what food we had.”

  I nodded sympathetically, recalling the previous night’s discussion on marriage as a way to “better” your family and on placing too much emphasis on material things. Money, the ladies had pointed out, doesn’t automatically bestow good manners. Nora had vigorously condemned the class prejudices that threatened Lizzy and Darcy’s happiness and just as vigorously supported unions based on love, not the desire for a successful merger. Clearly, none of this was theoretical for her.

  “Chica, what about you?” she asked, sipping her coffee. “Tell me more about that Mexican.”

  I gave her the nutshell version of how I’d met Diego more than a year ago on an impromptu beach trip to Puerto Vallarta, before I’d had any Spanish lessons at La Escuela. A year later I went back for a week’s stay with him right after I’d finished my classes that May, so my upcoming visit would actually be trip number three (I do love repeat journeys). “He’s really a great guy—very handsome, very easygoing. I’ll be doing my next Jane Austen group with him and his friends.”

  She clasped her hands together gleefully, just as Ani had done the night before when Darcy proposed a second time to Lizzy. “That’s so romantic! We don’t find love when we’re looking for it, you know. That’s not how it works. Love finds us.”

  “Vamos a ver,” I smiled, using a favorite phrase I’d heard there: “We’ll see.”

  “Now I have something for you,” Nora smiled. From her enormous purse, the kind mothers always seem to carry, she pulled a neatly wrapped package. Inside was a glass plaque inscribed with a saying, on a carved wooden base.

  “You didn’t have to do this, Nora!” I protested. “You’ve done so much for me already, giving your time and organizing everything here!”

  But you can’t stop a Guatemalan from being generous. “It wasn’t work, it was fun. We all enjoyed it! And reading Jane Austen gave us something special to talk about even before you arrived.”

  We gossiped on, but the time finally came, even by leisurely local standards, to pay the check. I lingered just a bit more; it’s easier to say good-bye to someone when you’ve got a clear idea of when you’ll be saying hello again.

  “I will be back,” I promised. “I’m just not sure when. Maybe next Christmas?”

  “Que te vayas muy, muy bien, chica,” Nora said with a hug and a kiss—travel very, very well. “I’ll be here!”

  ***

  Seeing Gustavo the driver’s familiar face raised mixed feelings since this time he signaled my departure, not my arrival. I wondered if he’d notice how much heavier my suitcases were, stuffed to the gills with books I’d bought.

  “Things are going well with your daughter’s studies?” I asked.

  “Very well, thank you! And your reading group?”

  I summed up my lively exchanges with Luis (“Ah, that Luis!” he laughed), my conversations with the ladies, and the reading I’d been doing.

  “Did you call your mother?” he asked with a smile. We’d talked about her nervousness on the ride in.

  “Absolutely. She knows that as of this morning, I’m still alive.” And Diego knew that I’d be there with him in Mexico soon.

  As we eventually reached the sprawling outskirts of Guatemala City and Gustavo needed to concentrate on navigating the heavy traffic, I reflected back on the “girls’ night out.” I wasn’t planning to do any of the other sessions as single gender, but it had turned out to be a fun and comfortable arrangement for the first venture.

  When I’d asked them whether Pride and Prejudice could have taken place in Guatema
la, just as it was, with appropriate name changes, the ladies’ unanimous answer was yes. Now I asked myself if our reading group conversation could have taken place in the United States just as it was, substituting Ann for Ani, Mercy for Mercedes, and so on. Or were there elements specific to this setting, this culture, specific to Antigua, Guatemala?

  I’ve never heard U.S. students shift from Austen into racial prejudice—but within the recent memory of all five women, the Guatemalan army was wiping out entire indigenous villages while indigenous guerillas were picking off soldiers and perceived collaborators in response. I’d spoken with one Guatemalan who said they should disband their army altogether, like Costa Rica had done. “We can’t possibly defend ourselves from foreigners with it. The government just uses the army to push its own citizens around.” This is an alien reality for most people in the United States, who, whatever their thoughts on foreign policy, see the military as there to support us, not oppress us.

  As for gender, traditional roles for men and women are more sharply marked in Guatemala than in the United States. Where I teach, someone trying to impose a skirts-or-dresses-only code for women would be laughed off campus; the women at La Escuela fought off just such a measure, proposed with a straight face.

  I couldn’t help but think that these realities, these struggles, made Austen’s world even more accessible in Antigua. Sometimes my young California students just don’t get how Lizzy has gone out on a seriously shaky limb by rejecting not one but two marriage proposals. They don’t see why Lydia’s premarital jaunt with Wickham is a Very Big Deal for her family. Granted, TV shows like Sex in the City and movies like Bridget Jones’s Diary wouldn’t exist if Anglos weren’t jumpy about singledom too, and our sexual double-standard is still alive and well. (I’d love to see the day when a film like Easy A, an adaptation of The Scarlet Letter, wouldn’t make sense any more: “A guy who has sex is a hero but a girl who does is a slut? On what planet?”)

  So maybe the difference is one of degree, not of kind. But in a country like Guatemala where marriage and motherhood remain the gold standard (unless one takes the nun option) and a woman’s expiration date rolls around very early, in a country where a woman’s reputation still seriously affects her entire family, Pride and Prejudice just might resonate on more levels.

  So maybe because of the differences—not in spite of them—with no prompting from me the women all felt the connection between Austen’s world and their own. They’d transitioned seamlessly from Mrs. Bennet to meddling mothers in Antigua, from the tribulations of Lizzy and Darcy to their own varied marital experiences, from class prejudice in England to racial prejudice in their own country. Austen was, to them, more familiar than foreign.

  Would it be the same in Mexico and Ecuador, in Chile and Paraguay and Argentina? To a greater or a lesser extent? Vamos a ver. We’ll see.

  I was taking away so much, and not just in the bulging suitcases—wonderful memories, great experiences with Luis and with the women, a world of fabulous new authors to enjoy. And safely stowed in my carry-on was Nora’s engraved plaque, a gift with a message suggesting I’d also be leaving something precious behind:

  Gracias a ti, mi mundo seguirá siendo un lugar lleno de posibilidades y esperanzas.

  “Thanks to you, my world will continue to be a place full of possibilities and hope.”

  I’ll confess that Nora’s gift brought tears to my eyes, given that I’d learned a hell of a lot more from my new Austen buddies than they could have from me—and I don’t just mean Spanish, either. Still, making time to read and discuss Austen drew Nora, Élida, Mercedes, Ani, and Flor out of their usual routine, and now the book club bug had bitten them. They all assured me they’d make more such opportunities, with or without me around.

  But I couldn’t really take credit for that “Gracias a ti.” Thanks were due instead to a woman who wrote an incredible future for herself, one page at a time—although if anybody had told her a group of ladies would be laughing over Mr. Collins two centuries later and half a world away, Austen probably would have suggested they lay off the laudanum.

  In which the author rejoins a long-distance sweetheart in Mexico, buys more books, offers a few reflections on Mexican writers and fun fotonovelas, gives Austen’s Catherine Morland a spin around the block, sees a ghost, is verbally assaulted by a poet, and, after three depressing weeks sick in bed, emerges to discuss Sense and Sensibility with smart and interesting folks.

  Chapter Four

  Guatemala was not my first venture into Latin America. More than a year before my Antigua Austen group, I flew to Puerto Vallarta for an end-of-semester beach break. That’s when I met Diego, my driver for the half-hour ride to the hotel. He was tickled, he later told me, by my pre-Escuela Spanish, as I bounced from window to window in the backseat to take in the gorgeous sights, sputtering out gems like “Very good ocean! Very! Mountain pretty!”

  Smiling into the rear view, midway through the ride Diego invited me to go dancing that night.

  “No,” I said flatly. I was not dashing off with the first man in Mexico who spoke to me. Yes, he had handsome dark eyes, thick, closely trimmed black hair, and an adorable droopy Pancho Villa mustache. Yes, his skin was incredibly close in color to milk chocolate. Chocolate! But no.

  “You don’t like to dance?” he pursued.

  “I like. But with you, no dance.”

  He took one more shot after he’d set my bags in the hotel lobby, switching to his rudimentary English for my sake. “Here’s my number. I honestly don’t ask out every woman who gets in my taxi. But I’d really like to see you again.”

  “Maybe,” I said, meaning “no,” despite how sincere he looked.

  Still, as the week slipped by I found myself remembering his cheerful, handsome face. How about if I hired him my last day to drive me to nearby Mismaloya, the lush film location of Night of the Iguana and a number of scenes in Predator? He could take me there then deposit me at the airport for my departing flight. That was innocent enough.

  And so it went. Diego was pleased to show off the sweeping seascape of Mismaloya and the verdant hills, noisily alive with birds. And if I liked hills, how about a view of all of Puerto Vallarta?

  “There’s time before your flight. I want to show you where I jog every day.”

  Off we went up a dirt mountain road so rutted and narrow I feared for the vehicle. Part way up we pulled over to let a man descending with a burro pass by.

  The view at the summit was worth the trip—there was all of Puerto Vallarta below and the sparkling ocean. And here I was with a complete stranger just a bit taller than me but from the muscular look of him, considerably stronger. Perhaps this was the part where he would jump me then toss my body into the thick vegetation, to be eaten slowly by the fist-sized spiders hanging from the surrounding trees.

  What on earth was I doing up here with this man? This was precisely the sort of risky behavior that would lead my poor mother to have one fewer child. But I’d traveled a lot over the years, and I trusted my instincts. They told me that here was a person who wanted to show off the best view going of the idyllic place where he was born and raised.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” He smiled proudly. “I never get tired of seeing it from here.”

  Diego took me to the airport, wrote down my email address, and our lengthy correspondence began. It didn’t take much prompting for me to return the next May for another week’s vacation, prior to my trip to Guatemala. And that’s how, a year after he’d first asked, we finally went dancing. Diego was amazed at how much better my Spanish was, and we agreed on a no-English rule so I could keep improving. At the end of a ridiculously happy week I asked him two very important questions:

  “Would you like to read a novel by Jane Austen? And…have you got four or five friends who’d like to, also?”

  Yes and yes. So now I was back yet again, this t
ime for a three month stay. The passionate Marianne types of the world might be hoping for something juicy on our reunion at the airport. I’ve always been more of an Elinor, myself, when it comes to sharing detail—not big on kiss-and-tell. I will say that it felt right to be there. Seeing Diego poised to grab me for a hug as I cleared customs made me happier than I’d felt since I’d left the States. And I was certainly pleased, as we reached his taxi, to see the copy of Sentido y Sensibilidad I’d mailed him before setting off for Antigua.

  One of Diego’s friends had a house for rent, cheap, because it was under construction. When we arrived there Diego watched my reaction closely with a hopeful smile. The house was supposed to have been closer to done by the time I arrived, but…así es la vida. Such is life.

  I couldn’t help but see the house reflected through Diego’s happy gaze. It radiated color and warmth. The covered entryway was draped with trailing branches of vivid purple bougainvillea, and in the straight line of sight from the front door to the rear patio, I could see newly planted greenery out back. The rich dark woodwork of the staircase was identical to the wood of the interior doors, carved with different aquatic scenes. Dolphins sported on the bathroom door, seahorses on one bedroom door, sea turtles on another. The floors were tiled, a mocha brown on the ground floor, sky blue on the second. The beautiful tile ceiling of the master bedroom made its way from one wall to the other not as a flat surface but rather as a series of three long, gentle arches that mirrored the form of the individual tiles themselves.

  “So, what do you think?” he smiled.

  As if on cue, a neighborhood rooster crowed somewhere nearby. How I missed the pet chickens I’d left behind in the States! I sighed happily at the familiar sound. “It’s perfect.”

  “You haven’t seen the best part yet!” He gave me a squeeze and led me up to the house’s top level, an unfinished, covered roof patio, which he called the azotea. “It’s got something for me and something for you. Guess which is which!” he laughed. A hammock strung between two cement pillars and a punching bag suspended from the ceiling—not much guesswork there. Diego had been an amateur boxer for years and still served as a trainer and sparring partner in a local gym. This was the best part of the house! I could lie there with a book, catching the sea breezes and watching him work up a nice, attractive sweat.