All Roads Lead to Austen

by Amy Elizabeth Smith

“People just know her by name,” Fernando said.

  “Very few people have read her,” Silvia agreed. “Maybe it has to do with people not reading much from that time, but they do read Russian novels from that period.”

  “What about Emily Dickinson?” Fernando said, raising the subject of the group’s preferred genre. “I don’t think people here know about her poetry.”

  “I think they do,” Marcia countered mildly.

  “But where can you get translations of her poetry? I really don’t think they exist.”

  “I believe she’s been translated,” Elvira offered.

  “Do you mean it’s hard to find translations of Dickenson in particular or poetry in general?” I asked.

  “I think that poetry’s translated less, in general,” Silvia responded.

  “I really don’t like to read translations of poetry,” Carmen Gloria said with a shake of her head. “I just feel like I’m not really connecting with the writer when I do.”

  “Well, I think it would be practically impossible to translate poetry from German or French,” Carmen Gloria continued. I could see the others poised to pick up this line of conversation, so I cut in.

  “We’ve got a reservation at a restaurant nearby,” I said half apologetically, knowing how they’d love to talk poetry but not wanting to miss our table at the popular nightspot I’d selected. Our two hours had flown by in no time.

  “Okay, but one more thing.” Carmen Gloria gestured dramatically with one hand for attention. “I’ve got a recommendation, because I was just going crazy trying to contextualize Austen, and I found somebody on the Web. Read Mary Wollstonecraft,” she said.

  Wollstonecraft’s major works came out in the 1790s, when Austen was drafting early versions of some of her novels. Wollstonecraft lived a life radically different from Austen’s; she traveled widely, had multiple lovers, and bore a child out of wedlock. Near the end of her life she married and gave birth to Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. But the two writers shared many ideas about women, including that mutual respect is the best foundation for a good couple.

  Carmen Gloria knew that a laid-back attitude toward timing still got my knickers in a twist, despite my best attempts at assimilation. Saying a bit more about Wollstonecraft, she winked at me and reached for her purse to move things along. But suddenly getting a naughty look on her face, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed.

  “Hello, Ramon?” Carmen Gloria said, adopting that instantly recognizable answering machine voice when she didn’t reach the study abroad director himself. “We’re waiting for you. We haven’t even started the discussion yet!” Wow, that was very naughty of her! “It’s nine o’clock at night already! Should we start without you? Well, give me a call. Chao!” Even a Twain lover who’d slighted Austen didn’t deserve to think he’d held up the entire reading group. But I had to assume they’d work it out, since Carmen Gloria and Ramon had known each other a lot longer than I’d known either of them.

  Just as we seemed poised to leave, another exchange about how critical Austen actually was of her culture flared up again. Then Fernando raised yet another topic. Would other happy diners be enjoying our table by this point? Well, so be it. I had to chill out and let the night happen.

  “It’s just fabulous when Willoughby and Colonel Brandon have that duel,” Fernando said, laughing, “and they both manage to walk away satisfied. It’s like magic. They’ve done the right thing, there’s nothing more to be said!”

  Elvira agreed: “The role of manners and customs is something I liked about the book. Compare it to things today. Our relations are often so fraught, so harsh, especially from the point of view of language.”

  Silvia nodded vigorously. “Such a fault of courtesy—that’s the word. I also liked that about the book. It’s something worth recovering, something worth teaching.”

  I was surprised to see this somewhat more sentimental side of the readers, who’d been so focused on the critical and technical aspects of Austen’s novel. North, Central, and South America weren’t so far apart after all. The teachers in Guatemala were definitely taken with Austen’s emphasis on courtesy, and it’s a common subject of conversation with my California students. They often find themselves pleasantly surprised by a world where people treat each other with a certain courtliness (the irony being that they’re precisely the generation so often accused of completely lacking manners themselves—but what’s a discussion of Austen without a little irony?).

  On that note, copies of the book were stowed, and purses and jackets gathered for the walk to the restaurant. I waved at the doormen on the way out, who looked curious at the size of the group I was hosting; I’d been a very private tenant. Don Alberto, fortunately, was off duty. Most of the readers began lighting cigarettes, and Carmen Gloria and Marcia discussed the small-world discovery that Marcia’s mother had been one of Carmen Gloria’s favorite high school teachers. Suddenly, Fernando caught me by the arm and allowed the others to move on ahead of us.

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” he said, looking vaguely embarrassed. What on earth was he about to confess? Sending one more glance in the direction of the smoking, chatting cluster ahead of us, he fixed me with an urgent gaze. “It’s about Elinor. When I was reading the book I…I fell in love with her. I really did. I fell in love with Elinor!”

  Too surprised to answer, I stared at him for a moment then smiled. Here was a Chilean who liked more than Austen’s narrative technique!

  He smiled back, sighed with relief that his secret was out, and changed the subject.

  ***

  “404” wasn’t a highway. It was an edgy, fusion-style restaurant featuring live music. Clean lines, metal, and glass dominated the décor; the contrast with the Guatemalan restaurant where I’d dined with the ladies, cheerfully cluttered with wooden furniture, photos of happy diners, and enormous plants, couldn’t have been greater. Despite my fussy fears, the hostess was happy to find us a table well past our reservation time. The smokers in our group, respectful of the nonsmokers, agreed to seating on the first floor. This made conversation a good bit easier since the musicians, also fusion oriented in a bluesy rock sort of way, were on the upper level surrounded by an immense cloud of smoke.

  After settling in at our table, we quickly found ourselves back on the topic of Austen, as Silvia suggested that the translator appeared to be Chilean.

  “There really are a lot of Chilean phrases in the book,” Marcia agreed.

  “The language seems really contemporary, too,” Elvira added.

  “Speaking of contemporary—” This was a great opening to ask my standard question about whether Austen could be transposed neatly into their contemporary culture.

  The group pondered for a moment, then Fernando responded first. “As far as I’m concerned, yes, I think Austen could be transposed here to Chile.”

  Feeling a little wicked, I pursued, “So, you’d say there are Chilean women like Elinor?”

  He studied his hands resting on the table for a moment, looking a little nervous that I’d expose his Elinor secret. Then he smiled. “I think so. Certainly among the big landowners of the countryside, I’d say so.”

  “I think so too,” Silvia said. “The politics, the social classes, all of those marriages of convenience, those things seem universal.”

  “But one important difference here,” Fernando said, “is that, instead of titles being so important, family names are what establish a person’s social status.”

  “Very good point,” Elvira said, while Marcia added, “I think that’s true of Latin American countries in general.”

  “Names here,” Fernando continued, “actually function like a barrier against race mixing. Clarifying that I’m from, let’s say, the Undurraga family of Concepción, and not the Undurraga family of some other place, since we’re the ones who are
—”

  “White,” Silvia finished his thought. “As in, we haven’t got any indigenous blood.”

  “This really is a ‘whitened’ country,” Marcia explained. “The nature of the conquest was different, and more indigenous people survived in places like Bolivia and Peru. But here they deliberately tried to ‘whiten’ things up, to the point that you hardly see indigenous features in the streets like you do in Brazil and other countries.”

  “Not pure indigenous,” Fernando clarified. “But the fact is that all of us here are mixed race.”

  If there were a good Spanish equivalent I’d use it, but since there isn’t, I’ll go for the French: déjà vu. Somehow I hadn’t expected this theme to surface in the Chile group, but while it took longer than it had in Guatemala, here was the race question once again.

  “There’s even a kind of pride people have in not being indigenous,” Fernando added with a sad shake of his head.

  As good Chilean wine arrived and then, eventually, our food, we talked about the difficulties of getting poetry published in Chile (conclusion: very difficult). As the talk moved further away from Austen, I also couldn’t resist verifying if we, as a group, were an enormous statistical anomaly—six childless people over forty. I already knew Carmen Gloria didn’t have children, but since the subject had never come up, I’d assumed the others didn’t either.

  Lo and behold, both Marcia and Silvia were mothers, proud to say so when asked. I was struck by the difference with the Mexican readers of Sense and Sensibility—children were front and center in the discussions with both groups, especially with Salvador and Soledad. Then again, readers in Mexico had been much more focused on drawing connections between their own lives and the novel. That merited some thought when I had less wine in my system.

  At the hour when the staff in any self-respecting American restaurant would be upending chairs onto vacated tables and sending pointed glances at lingering diners, we talked on, and 404’s hostess was busier than ever ferrying in new arrivals. Oscar, the Chilean from the Ecuador Pride and Prejudice group, had hosted a dinner for the book club shortly before I left Guayaquil. He’d invited us to his place for 9:00 p.m. While he had plenty of appetizers, the first course didn’t hit the table until 11:58 p.m. Still weak from dengue, I was nearly fainting with fatigue by the time the mousse topped off the six-course menu at 1:00 a.m. Clearly, Chileans loved their late dinners, even on a weekday.

  Dengue-free, I could completely enjoy this dinner and wonderful sobremesa, that warm, fitting latino tribute to lingering over good food and good company.

  “Well, amiga,” Carmen Gloria said, sipping her wine then gesturing toward my tiny little recorder on the table, silently taking in our conversation amid the glasses, dishes, and rumpled napkins. “With this group, I think you’ve got enough material for five books. We’ve covered everything!”

  Although Austen faltered somewhat at the end of Sense and Sensibility, as the readers had pointed out, the beautiful pacing of the rest of her novels shows that she was an admirer of good timing. Slowly but surely, I myself was spending more time responding to local rhythms and less trying to impose my own. To smiles and laughter all around, I dramatically hit the off button and picked up my wine glass.

  Chapter Twelve

  For pretty much any day of the year, my mother can name at least two birthdays. She has the entire extended family down—aunts, cousins, nephews, great-grandkids, and all. This is no mean feat, since my German grandmother was the youngest of fourteen. One of my aunts hoped to top that number until my uncle, happy with eight, snuck out and got a vasectomy (my poor aunt cried for a month). I have twenty-eight first cousins, and once they got to reproducing, we quickly hit triple digits. My mother knows all their birthdays, along with those of her four children’s friends, coworkers, and coworkers’ children (plus most of my ex-boyfriends’ birthdays, although at my request she finally stopped mentioning those).

  Knowing her affinity for dates, when the anniversary of my father’s death comes around in April, we all call—my oldest brother David from Pittsburgh; Laurie from Gettysburg; and Shawn and I from wherever on the planet we happen to be. You’d think Chile would win me the long-distance prize, but that year Shawn beat me again: he called from Bangkok, Thailand. He’s dubbed the anniversary Welshman Day, in honor of our father’s ancestry.

  My mother and I were able to enjoy longer, more comfortable calls from Santiago since I had a home phone and didn’t need to hunt down a booth on a dog-filled street or in a noisy Internet café.

  “Now that your group is done,” she asked when I reported in for Welshman Day, “what else are you working on?”

  “I’m reading a lot of Chilean literature. I’m also giving a talk on Austen at one of the other universities here. In Spanish. I’m pretty nervous about it.”

  She and my father had supported me through every band concert, every role in every play, every recital in college during my music years, and through doctoral exams when I switched to English. “You’ll do just fine,” she said confidently.

  “I’m keeping an eye on my students, too. One of them has started to miss a lot of class, and I’m concerned about her.”

  While Mom commiserated over my student, the word “concern” set off her maternal alarm bells.

  “You haven’t had any new problems with your health, have you? Nothing since you’ve been in Chile?”

  I could only hope the Gods of Travel would forgive me a lie of omission. While my dengue was finally gone, I hadn’t told my mother about the ringworm incident. The secretary for the study abroad program was also a registered nurse, and when I’d reported for duty in January she’d greeted me, handed over orientation materials, and pointed at the large, puffy purple circle on my right calf visible below the line of my Capri pants.

  “You know that’s ringworm, right?” she asked dryly.

  Hell’s bells. I’d noticed the circle growing on my leg midway through my time in Ecuador, but I’d decided that if I ignored it, it would certainly go away. Ringworm? I bolted off to a clinic, freaked that I’d brought a stowaway to Chile. Once I named it Pepe, however, I started to feel better about the whole situation. By the time the doctor told me ringworm was a fungus and not an actual worm, I felt kind of cheated.

  I vacillated over my mother’s question, since she’d been so direct. But technically Pepe wasn’t a Chilean problem, because I’d smuggled him from Ecuador.

  I settled for a downplay. “Nothing major. Just a skin thing on my leg way back in January, and that was easy to get rid of. Oh, you know what! My friend Cheryl will be coming down in the beginning of May!” No, I was also not above the change-the-subject dodge. “We’re renting a car and touring around once classes finish up.”

  “I’m so glad that you’re getting this opportunity,” she said. Her voice took on a wistful tone. There were two closets in her bedroom, and I was willing to bet that right then, she was looking at the one that still held some of my father’s clothes. And his reading glasses.

  “I know. Dad would have loved to have heard about it,” I answered. Ringworm and all, in fact.

  ***

  The Mansfield Park talk was my academic debut in Spanish, so naturally I got the worst cold I’d had in years two days before. If only Diego were there to help nurse me and laugh my nervousness back into perspective!

  I’d scripted the talk, fearing I’d freeze up in front of the audience, so with enough tissues the delivery itself was manageable. I spoke on how Patricia Rozema’s very liberal film adaptation explores issues of race and class. I’m partial to the film for the excellent directing and the way it challenges just how the rich get rich. But it’s also a catalogue of every sexual subject Austen delicately ignores, from girl-on-girl to incest to rape. There’s even a scene that prompted one of my students back in the States to blurt out, during a class viewing, “Lady, get
your hands off that PUG!” When I spoke on it years earlier at a conference in England—the same one where I spotted the fabulous Northanger tattoo—I spent twenty minutes afterward calming an important Australian scholar who was literally shaking with rage over Rozema’s liberties with Miss Austen’s most morally profound novel.

  A bit of sneezing aside, I made it through the talk just fine. But the Q&A with smart, competitive graduate students and professors was another matter. I have enough trouble deciphering what certain academic types are saying in English, let alone a second language, and some of the questions that night left me slack-jawed.

  Thank god for Carmen Gloria. She’d arranged the invitation for the talk in the first place and was a huge help, fielding questions for me and helping translate. But there must have been a few folks who went home shaking their heads over the stuttering, sniffly estado unidense. Well, I did my best. I just had to pray I hadn’t soured anybody on Austen!

  ***

  Maybe I wasn’t up to academic jargon in Spanish, but I was certainly doing better than when I’d arrived and had my first conversations with the doormen. Ever since the laundry room liplock I’d been slipping past the post quickly when Don Alberto was around, but now there seemed to be several new faces. The handsome Emilio, who’d become so agitated over the subject of the coup, hadn’t been there for more than a month. Curious, I finally asked Demetrio the Spaniard if he knew why.

  His expression turned deeply sad. “His mother committed suicide last month. Apparently, not long after the coup she went to get milk one evening and didn’t come back.” I’d read enough Chilean history about “detentions” to know where this story was heading. “Some neighbors found her months later, lying in an alley. She’d been tortured and also—well, she wasn’t the same. I guess she couldn’t take it anymore, even after all these years. Emilio’s helping out with his family right now.”

  Good god. I thought back to how I’d stood there early in my visit, chirping on about how pretty it was to walk along the river. No wonder Emilio couldn’t look at it without thinking about the bodies dumped there, about people hunting for their loved ones. I was glad that I could see the beauty of Santiago—I couldn’t be sorry for that. But this was one of those reminders that I was only skimming the surface there. Even months of familiarity couldn’t make me or my students, for that matter, capable of seeing the city the way Chileans do.