The Translators: A Novel

By Robert Fedorchek

Pilar Orsini Oquendo has just lost the love of her life. Her fianc, Gonzalo, has been wrenched from her grasp by his untimely passing. Left alone to grieve, she finds herself at their favorite place, on a secluded beach in Spain. It is here where Gonzalos childhood friend finds Pilar and, in a fit of lust, rapes her.

Distraught and betrayed, Pilar soon finds the rape has produced a pregnancy. Despite the difficulty, Pilar decides to keep the baby. She struggles to wade through her emotional turmoil and continue her ambitious career as a translator of American literature. While speaking at Columbia University, Pilar meets Gus Brubaker.

Gus is a Spanish literature translator, and he is immediately taken in by Pilars intellect and stunning beauty. Pilar is conflicted and still dealing with the aftermath of her rape as her attacker continues his harassment. She is also pregnant. How will she explain this to Gus, who, she believes, will surely leave her when she reveals her pregnancy?

The Translators tells a story of troubled romance set in the world of linguistics and literature. As Pilar and Gus travel the world together, they also must travel beyond pains of the past. In the conquering of violence, there is a possibility of healing and perhaps, a possibility of endless love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 21, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450249447

Robert Fedorchek

Robert Fedorchek is a professor emeritus of modern languages and literatures at Fairfield University; he holds a BA, MA, and PhD. In addition to his first novel, The Translators, he has published eighteen books of translations of Spanish and Portuguese literature. He and his wife live in Fairfield, Connecticut.

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Copyright © 2010 by Robert Fedorchek

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The Translators is a work of fiction. All of the characters, occurrences, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-4943-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-4945-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-4944-7 (ebook)

iUniverse rev. date: 09/01/2010

Contents

Acknowledgments

Part I

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

Part II

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

Part III

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

Part IV

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

Part V

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

EPILOGUE

Addendum A

Addendum B

For the loving Pilar of my life

Acknowledgments

My wife Theresa read, tirelessly and patiently, numerous drafts of The Translators, which has profited greatly from her commentary. As my first critic she brought insight into a woman’s emotional turmoil and perspective on a woman’s gentle strength. On another plane, her support throughout the long days of the many, many months and the many, many rewrites that it took me to complete this novel shored me up when my spirits flagged. In the language spoken so well by Pilar Orsini Oquendo, Te quiero, corazón mío.

In Oviedo, Spain, my friend Carolina Fernández Rodríguez, a professor of English literature at the Universidad de Oviedo, scrutinized the typescript in its entirety, critiquing it with enthusiasm, with generosity, and with honesty. Te lo agradezco mucho, Carol.

Shortcomings—it goes without saying—are mine, and mine alone.

Areal do Xunqueiro

Vigo, Spain

Mid August, 1988

It had been their secret place, a cove of difficult access, and for that reason little frequented, so Pilar, alone with her anguish, alone with her despair, sat on the blanket, hugging her knees, which she had drawn up to her chin. The setting sun had tinged the water with wavy ripples of gold and red and orange, but the sun had long since dipped below the horizon, and now the beach’s sand had cooled and the lights playing on the water had turned into pallid reflections of the lamps that wound along the coast road. Not only had it been their secret place, their favorite place, but the glorious place where—on a night very much like this one, the night of the día del apóstol, the night of July 25th, thought a pained Pilar—she and Gonzalo had made love for the first time. They had planned a May wedding. Because Pilar lived in Santiago de Compostela her mother and his mother and father, loving parents, old-school parents, took for granted that it would be celebrated in the historic cathedral. She picked up a handful of sand, let the grains trickle though her fingers as though they were falling through the hourglass of her future; she picked up another white handful, and the tears came, and she recalled the afternoon in May when they met on the Paseo de la Herradura. She hadn’t even wanted to go, but her friend Concha had insisted, and a friend of a friend introduced them at the café where they stopped for coffee. He liked you, Concha had said to her. Don’t be silly, she had retorted, pink with embarrassment. But it had been true. And the feeling had been mutual. More sand trickled through her fingers. At the age of twenty-nine, thought Pilar, I met the man I would love at an outdoor café. Now he’s gone, killed at a construction site he was inspecting with another engineer because he had neglected to wear a hard hat. Five weeks to the day, and she had taken the train from Santiago the last three Fridays to be on the beach where they had made love the first time.

Pilar sensed a presence, felt his eyes on her. It didn’t surprise her. Knowing the secret cove, he had come the previous Friday, for he also had loved Gonzalo. Even though the two had seen very little of each other in the last six years or so, during early childhood they had been practically inseparable. He sat next to her, put his arm around her shoulder, and kissed her on the cheek. Do I have to tell you how much I miss him too?, he asked, and Pilar, trusting, grieving, laid her head on his shoulder, her bosom heaving, and she gave vent to her tears, hot tears that were washing away an unknown lifetime. She hugged him fiercely, seeking solace, seeking comfort, and collapsed on the blanket, the hot tears streaming down her face as she shook and shook and shook, until he lay alongside her and held her and quieted her. He had always wanted to hold Pilar in his arms, he had dreamed, actually dreamed, of holding her in his arms, and he had fantasized about holding her in his arms, and … and now she was in his arms, trusting, grieving, and the touch of her bare shoulders electrified him, her sweet breath, like ambrosia, stoked every desire he had suppressed, unleashed all semblance of restraint, and he put his lips to those tears and drank of her, and in a rush of excitement put his lips to her lips and crushed them and exulted in the taste of them as he rolled on top of her. Pilar wrenched her face away from his. ¿Qué estás haciendo? ¡Déjame! ¡Déjame!, What’re you doing?, she said, alarm giving way to panic as he pinned her to the blanket and again tasted her lips and paid homage to her lips. Yo te … yo te quiero también. Siempre te he querido. Déjame quererte, I’ve always loved you, he panted as he raced, frantic now, to free himself and spread her legs and get at her. ¡No, no! ¡Por tu madre! ¡Por lo que más quieras … ! His eyes had begun to widen. ¿No entiendes, Pilar? ¡Te quiero, te quiero! Don’t you understand, Pilar? I love you, I love you!, he repeated with each thrust as Pilar sobbed hysterically. ¡Déjame, déjame!, she wailed!, Stop, stop, but he didn’t stop. He again crushed her lips and pinned her arms to her sides and possessed her and then, soaring to a height he had never known, froze and uttered, his eyes glassy, his face the very picture of a misdeed, ¡Me voy, me voy!, and Pilar, now desperately awash in agonized tears, felt the warm surge as he spent himself inside her.

The second set of eyes that Pilar had not sensed clouded over with tears of their own; he stood there immobile behind the tall rock, clutching a jagged edge so fiercely that blood trickled between his fingers, his heart pounding with guilt and shame because he had not raced to her rescue, but had watched like a coward and not prevented the violación.

Part I

ONE

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When my mother named me Augustus, for it was her doing, she thought that Augustus Brubaker had a seignorial ring, and that, when I grew up and prospered and assumed my rightful place in society, A. B. would have a dignified sound when used by intimates and business associates. Dad, wise in the ways of his and Mother’s marriage, knew better than to argue and held his tongue, knowing—as he explained to me when I was of an age to understand—that he would savor sweet revenge by calling me Gus and not Augie from the time that I was an adorable infant pooping in my diapers and demanding the breast (both breasts more often than not, since it seems I was a greedy little thing). That I managed to gurgle during these two exercises was taken as a good omen or a harbinger of things to come, for surely those gurgles foretold a sunny disposition. So much for a prediction of one’s adult temperament when one is a babe in arms. (As an aside I will add that Dad won out, because Gus I became and Gus I remain, to all and sundry. I thank my lucky stars. Can you imagine going through life as an Augie? I love Mother dearly, always have and always will, but in her attempt to give yours truly an … uh, shall we say august bearing through onomastic symbolism, she very nearly cut me off at the knees. It goes without saying that in addition to thanking my lucky stars, I have been eternally grateful to dear old dad.)

Let me say from the outset that, at the age of thirty-one, I am not blessed with an abundance of admirable character traits. However, on the plus side, I am loyal to friends and loved ones and honest to a fault, this latter quality or idiosyncrasy being my Achilles heel in the opinion of most of the women I’ve seen over the years. My only problem as a consequence, if a problem it be, is that I don’t have all that many friends, because in a true friendship you both give and take. And if all you do is give, the friend is selfish; and if all you do is take, you’re selfish. Acquaintances, yes, I have numerous acquaintances, but who doesn’t? So with the few genuine friends, honest-to-goodness friends, that I have, I feel blessed. While on the subject of my character, I need to add that I tend to be impatient with pomposity, pettiness, and superciliousness, and as a disillusioned, rebellious academic I’ve seen enough of all three to last me a lifetime. But I get ahead of myself. In all fairness, I should tell you, as objectively as I can, how I came to be an academic, that is to say, a disillusioned, rebellious academic.

I grew up in Georgetown, Connecticut, an affluent town nestled in the southwestern corner of the state. North of Stamford as the proverbial crow flies, it was, and continues to be, a swanky neighborhood built around lots of 19th-century Connecticut money and lots of 20th-century New York money. As an only child, I had the undivided attention of my mother, née Ava Gamble, my father, Hugo Brubaker, and the woman who made the house run, Josefina, whom we all called Fofe, a borinqueña from Ponce, Puerto Rico, a delightful chatterbox of a person and surely one of the warmest and most loving individuals God has seen fit to place on planet Earth. We all loved, and still do love, her dearly. Although nominally our cook, she also functioned as part-time governess, full-time overseer of the weekend cleaning crews that attended to the house, the pool, and the grounds, as well as the licensed full-time disciplinarian for A. B., that is, little Gus and big Gus, in other words, un servidor, as child, teenager, and adult. Because my mother was a woman of considerable foresight and believed that one day Spanish would be spoken as much on the east coast as it is on the west coast, she charged Fofe with speaking to me only in the language of René Marqués, and as a result I became fluent in Spanish at an early age, and, had I not been obtuse, stubborn, and immature, would have become bilingual, but kids will be kids, and sometimes I turned resistant and argumentative. As a result of my occasional childhood obstinacy, I am not bilingual. Para serlo, me falta ese poquitín. I’m close, though, I’m close.

When I went off to boarding school I met a few clever boys from Río Piedras, well-to-do sanjuaneros, who took it upon themselves to teach me some macho language. I should have rued the day. Innocent that I was, having mostly heard Fofe’s pure speech, little did I know that many stateside Puerto Ricans and other Latinos have decided to enrich the idiom of Castile by affixing Spanish suffixes to English words, by virtue of which a lunchería becomes an establishment where one eats lunch and a washetería a place where one does one’s laundry. Home for Thanksgiving one morning I was in the kitchen with Fofe and saw an elderly groundskeeper out by the pool raking the last of the leaves. Look, Fofe, I said to her. Ese pobre viejo se va a frisear los cojones. My straightforward and innocuous observation brought an immediate swat on my rump with a wooden spoon. She shocked me into momentary speechlessness. Speak like that again and you’ll get another one, she said indignantly. At first I suspected that it was my use of cojones that had upset her. But it’s not that off-color. Everybody knows what it means, right? (Translator that I am I will tell you that I observed to her, That poor old boy is going to freeze his gonads off.) But no, she objected to my use of the coinage of frisear for freeze. Who’s taught you to bastardize our beautiful Spanish language when we have a perfectly good word like helar?

Fofe was proud of how well she spoke. No doubt about it. And I think it secretly pleased her to introduce her charge, a charge with the not very Hispanic-sounding surname of Brubaker, to visiting cousins and watch their reactions as I spoke with a pure Puerto Rican accent, dropping practically all of my final esses, as well as the ones before consonants. However, lest you think our beloved Fofe a prude, I shall relate one more anecdote, one that tickled her fancy so much that she told it and retold it ad infinitum.

It occurred during my undergraduate days at Dartmouth in a poetry seminar given by Professor Tyrone Drake, Dr. Ty, as we used to call him, who actually spoke Spanish very, very well, and with the lilting lisp of Castilian learned in Salamanca. (You’ll notice that I already considered myself a competent judge of one’s linguistic ability.) It was just that one afternoon he was so zeroed in on language, so focused on nuance that he forgot and made a slip. Oh, what a slip! It became historic. The stuff of legend. There were nine of us in the class, two of whom were bonafide native speakers of Spanish, my great friend Nelson Ortiz from Bayamón, PR, and Domingo Montalbán from Veracruz, Mexico. Dr. Ty set about explaining that you cannot use nouns adjectivally in Spanish as you can in English, and he chose the example of tea and cup, both of them nouns, but nouns that can be used together to become teacup. Perfectly acceptable English usage. It was at this point that he put his foot in his mouth, figuratively speaking. You cannot, he continued, say tetaza for ‘teacup,’ as there is no such word in Spanish. Now. He was both right and wrong. No, tetaza does not—by any stretch—mean teacup, but there actually is such a word. I caught it, I am pleased to report, only a split second after Nelson and Domingo. To the point: té means tea, and taza means cup, however … tetaza is a horse of a different color in Spanish. The root teta is one of 13,000 words in the language of Cervantes that mean a woman’s mammary gland, or tit, in the vernacular; -azo, -aza are augmentative suffixes that speak to great size, and as a result a tetaza is a big tit. I really and truly thought that poor Domingo was going to wet his pants, so hard did he try to suppress laughter. Minutes later, when we had a break and the others stayed behind to chat with Dr. Ty, the three of us exited the classroom and Domingo ran to the water fountain. From the other end of the hallway, he yelled, in stitches, Oye, Nelson. ¿Qué te parecieron las tetazas de Drake? How did you like Drake’s big tits? Now, when Fofe laughed her belly shook; when she really laughed, tears came to her eyes. The day that I related this anecdote her lacrimal glands were in overdrive.

The point of all the above is to say that dear Fofe watched over my Spanish; my mother, blue pencil ever at the ready, watched over my English.

I say my mother because my father couldn’t write a decent sentence, let alone a paragraph, to save his soul, even though he was the publisher of the Bramble Group, community newspapers that flourished from New Haven to Darien. On the other hand, if you needed shrewd business acumen, someone who saw at a glance the significance of balance sheets and debit/credit statements and how to untangle them to produce a profit, he was your man. But getting back to Mother. She was the lynx-eyed copy editor and occasional columnist of Perennials & Annuals, a well-respected magazine that to this day commands the loyalty of flower enthusiasts all across the country. Mother was also a voracious reader of foreign fiction, and she introduced me to a host of Spanish- and Portuguese-language authors like Camilo José Cela, Miguel Delibes, Carmen Laforet, Luís de Sttau Monteiro, João Guimarães Rosa, José Lins do Rêgo, and many others, thereby instilling in me a love of literature and a desire to read them in the original. So after I left Dartmouth with an A.B. degree (for Artium Baccalaureus, and not Augustus Brubaker as some wags claimed), that love became the impetus for me to study at New York University, at which institution I enrolled in the graduate program of the department of Spanish and Portuguese, and where I studied for the M.A. and Ph.D. with some of the best professors I ever encountered in eight years of both undergraduate and graduate work.

Now, Señoras y señores, there are only so many avenues open to the holder of a Ph.D. in romance languages, even from such a prestigious institution as NYU. Banking?; no. The CIA?; no. The FBI?; no. The State Department?; maybe. The truth be told, I could have explored other maybes, but alas, I had become addicted to life in the city (as people in these parts refer to the borough of Manhattan, there being, one needs to understand, no other city in these United States of America). Spanish, Puerto Rican, and Cuban restaurants, as well as restaurants of every other Latino stripe; a Portuguese delight in the Village that rivaled those in Trenton, NJ; a string of Brazilian eateries on West 46th’s Little Brazil Street; the Hispanic Society of America on upper Broadway; the music of Isaac Albéniz and Joaquín Rodrigo at Carnegie and other halls; the lovely Rita Moreno everywhere; Alicia de Larrocha playing Enrique Granados … I could go on, but you get the idea. It was too much to give up. I couldn’t ask it of myself; I refused, for my well-being, to ask it of myself. What did it leave? Teaching? There were a few advantages. Time off at Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, the semester break, the Jewish high holidays, Easter, and summers. Yes, summers. Honesty must prevail. These were indeed advantages.

At the risk of seeming vainglorious, I had, even back then, a certain flair, a certain presence, and was sure I could succeed in the classroom, but, for perfectly obvious reasons, I dismissed grade school and middle school. That left the high school and college or university levels. A major consideration: Could I teach literature, my passion, in a high school? Besides, did I have the fortitude, let alone the courage, to teach high school? I asked this crucial question of myself and decided that I did, but it gave me considerable pause when I learned that I needed education credits (theory and a practicum, if you will) to teach in a high school in Connecticut or New York, for I was determined to be in one of these two states. (The apartment at Pelham Court had much to do with this decision, and I shall explain the apartment in a moment.) Therefore, imagine my delight when I learned from the NYU placement bureau that I did not need education credits of any sort to teach at the college level. I was thrilled. All those poor saps who taught in secondary schools had to have education credits, while I, the soon-to-be Dr. Augustus Brubaker could walk into any college classroom in the land and ply my trade, that is, my profession, without any theoretical training whatsoever, by virtue of having earned a Ph.D. degree, the union card of the day for us university types.

Armed with this information, I submitted to the humiliation of the meat room of the Modern Language Association’s annual convention, which was held in Toronto that year, where neophytes and job seekers of all ages market themselves. There are private meetings in rooms and suites, but I started out late, so I entered the meat room—an auditorium with between eighty and one hundred long tables, and upwards of four hundred tired, as well as tiresome, interviewers—with good cheer and a stout heart, and charged into seven interviews. They resulted in invitations for five on-campus visits, which produced two offers, generous offers considering that I had no teaching experience, zero scholarly publications, and a doctoral dissertation titled From Romanticism to Realism: the Evolution of the Novel in Nineteenth-Century Spanish Literature.

I accepted the offer made by the academic vice president of Northern Connecticut State University in Winsted, Connecticut, a picturesque New Englandish town that lies in the, that’s right, northern reaches of the state. Northern Connecticut is the second oldest of the compass universities, as Nutmeggers call them, together with Eastern, Southern, Western, and, in the eye of the magnetic needle’s pivot, Central. Because it enjoys an excellent reputation and high enrollment, and offers a degree in forestry, a program not available even at the state’s flagship school, the University of Connecticut at Storrs, Northern’s trustees and administration view it as the metaphorical north star of the state university system.

The position of assistant professor of Spanish in the department of modern languages was right down my alley. I hit if off immediately with Jean Louis Diderot, the chairman (whose bailiwick was French), and Dom Izzo (Italian), liked the courses I would teach (survey of Spanish literature and two advanced language classes), loved the campus that hinted at the beauty of the Berkshires, delighted in the legs of the assistant dean who acted as my guide (even though I could tell that she was going to make a valiant effort to resist my charms), and suppressed a shout of joy at the prospect of a nine-hour teaching load on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday schedule. I would be around for students all three days and devote Thursdays to class preparation and correction of written assignments, and then … and then, Friday afternoons—when I felt so moved—I would drive to Georgetown, a mere sixty-six or sixty-seven miles away, or roughly an hour and a half road time. There I would snack on Fofe’s fried plantains, chat briefly with Mom and Dad, and then take the train into the city. To the above-mentioned Pelham Court apartment on East 86th that Perennials & Annuals provided for my mother, a nifty apartment that she used only two or three days a week (and only rarely on weekends with Dad), an apartment that she would graciously allow her loving son to inhabit on Saturday, Sunday, and part of Monday. I had fallen in love with it during my graduate student days, even though it was quite a trek from the Village. But coming back to NCSU. What more could I ask? From Winsted to Georgetown to Gotham in a matter of hours.

I expect you can surmise from the above that from the very first week I was a success in the classroom—in all honesty, an unqualified success. Without a theoretical underpinning and without education credits. Outside of the classroom I got to know most of my colleagues; some I grew to like and shared their outlook, some I did not especially like and most emphatically did not share their views on pedagogy. Diana Whitaker, the assistant dean with the oh-so shapely gams, treated me with reserve and kept me at arm’s length; in other words, she treated me correctly, but coolly. Since there were other attractive ladies on the campus, I made no attempt to ingratiate myself. Wishing to be entirely objective, I scrutinized my feelings at her rejection of my overtures and determined that it was her loss. I stayed away from faculty hook-ups in the belief that they would color my judgment in such matters as committee decisions and votes at senate meetings, which explains why I turned my attention to two librarians. One of them (Kate) was as thin as a five-penny nail, but read voraciously and carried on a very pleasant, as well as informed, conversation; the other (Melissa), with a bit more weight on her, had a matchless derrière, and although she read a touch less, she carried on an equally pleasant conversation and was a good listener to boot. As I am sexist on occasion, there was an additional factor in Melissa’s favor, one that harkens back to a saying taught to me by Fofe’s Uncle Willie.

I had spent the entire summer between my sophomore and junior years at Dartmouth living with him and his wife in Ponce and working at Don Q, where he was the mandamás, or big boss, of the shipping department, and speaking Spanish twenty-four hours a day every day except Sunday, when Tío Willie and Tía Gloria asked to practice their already quite good English. At all events, one afternoon he caught me eyeing a pair of Latina beauties on their lunch break and asked me which one I intended to approach. I told him I didn’t know. He smiled, put his arm around my shoulder, and said: Mira, Gus (which came out sounding like Goose), en caso de duda, la más tetuda. The consonantal rime has always stayed with me, and since I have explained the meaning of teta and, more to the point, tetaza, I think the meaning is clear, but just in case: Look, Gus, when in doubt, the one with the biggest … (I’d say it, but I don’t want to appear to be too sexist.) Thinking of a possible roll in the hay, I struck up a conversation with Elena, and we, uh, hit it off, so to speak. And from time to time still do in the city. But the point of Tío Willie’s counsel is to call attention to the additional factor in Melissa’s favor.

At a cocktail and aperitif gathering at the AVP’s home shortly before Christmas of my second year at Northern Connecticut, I issued a second invitation to Dean Diana to dinner. (After a turn-down, I issue only one per year.) She demurred a second time and I smiled a second time. You have that look in your eye, she said. What look is that? I asked. The look that says, ‘What I want is to get you between the sheets,’ she answered. She must have expected that, in a moment of pusillanimous backpedaling, I would beg off and raise objections, because it disconcerted her when I unhesitatingly said, You’re right. I freely admit the attraction. However, I would much prefer to look at you across a dinner table first, talk to you, walk with you through woods around Sharon or browse the Gotham Book store with you. You know, to see whether we’d both like to get between the sheets. And I let my winsome smile envelop her. It didn’t work; she said it was unseemly fraternization that could only lead to trouble, and possible administrative recrimination, and remained steadfast in her polite refusal.

Perhaps it would be as well at this juncture to describe what I see whenever I look in the mirror. I am not your classic handsome devil. Although I have the most incredible pale blue eyes, they are so deep-set you would think they were in a foreign country, and my cheeks are so hollow that I appear undernourished, but I have a shapely nose and a good chin, the kind of chin that writers who give a detailed description of one’s physiognomy call strong. The forehead broad, the ears small, out of proportion to the expanse between them. Not the face of a hunk, and I assume, therefore, that it’s my knockout smile that attracts gals of all ages and all walks of life, that and my six-two, svelte body that radiates strength, vitality, and wholesomeness.

Long about mid January of that same second year at Northern Connecticut, and it had to be mid January because we were on semester break, I found myself breathing the diesel-choked air of the city and loving every minute of it. Mom and Dad were in Belize, where Mom was carrying out legitimate research on local flora and fauna for Perennials & Annuals, while Dad, scrupulously honest, a highly desirable trait that, as you know, he passed on to his son, paid for his half of the trip so that they could share the adventure; and Fofe, enjoying our yearly holiday gift to her, was in Ponce for the entire month of January, all expenses paid. Result: I had the apartment to myself for two glorious weeks, and, culture starved, I was going to movies, concerts, and plays practically every afternoon or evening. I went on a number of these outings with Nelson, who was now a big honcho with the Puerto Rican Trade Bureau, an important post when you consider that there are more Puerto Ricans in New York City than in San Juan. I enjoyed his merry company only because Elsa, the love of his life and soon-to-be bride, was back in Bayamón visiting her Mami and Papi. As I was much in need of the arts, poor Nelson was much in need of Elsa’s presence. With her sunny disposition, and occasional fiery temper, she brightened every one of his days, and with her curvaceous figure she gladdened his bed. They had been tender lovers for years and he sorely missed her. He claimed that she had the most delectable set of globos (his word, not mine, and one of the 13,000 alluded to earlier) to have come from the entire Caribbean, quite a statement, even speaking in hyperbole, and that the mere sight of them, au naturel or imprisoned in a bra, reinforced his belief that woman is God’s most perfect creation. He was fixed on her front matter only because he had never seen Dean Diana’s legs, legs I had seen only in Winsted but was about to see on my metropolitan turf.

On the eighth or ninth day of my stay I did some research at the Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library, and after a few hours realized that I needed to lay my hands on a few academic journals. So I hopped on an M 104 bus on 42nd Street, got off on West 116th , and slowly made my way to the Columbia University library. I had been there many times, used it many times, and always paused to check out the glass-enclosed cases, for the library usually had some sort of display of interest to the instructional staff and students, as well as to the general public. What caught my eye that morning was the front page of the newspaper-format Ínsula, a well-respected Spanish periodical of arts and letters, positioned on an acrylic stand like a lectern. The feature article dealt with a new translation of Edgar Allan Poe titled El escarabajo de oro y otros cuentos, The Gold Bug and Other Stories, and on the left side of the page was a head-to-waist photograph of the translator, a young woman with eyes that bespoke calm, and long hair that fell over her shoulders. Since the photograph, as well as the periodical, was in black and white, I couldn’t tell whether she was a brunette or a blonde. The face, though, intrigued me, but more than the face, the eyes, for not only did they seem to project calm, but sadness as well, and sweetness too, and reserve, and … at first I couldn’t put my finger on it; then it struck me: strength. I know, I know. That’s a lot to see in a body’s eyes. But I saw it.

I picked out a comfortable armchair and devoured the article on the spot. In essence it told me that her name was Pilar Orsini Oquendo, profesora titular de inglés (full professor of English) at the University of Santiago de Compostela at the relatively young age of twenty-nine, that she was bilingual, and that not only did she teach translation studies, but that she specialized in the translation of nineteenth-century American literature. I stared at these last pieces of information as if I were in an altered state of consciousness. As you must have already gathered, I am very interested in the question of bilingualism, and since she resided in Galicia, I had to believe that she was probably trilingual and spoke gallego too (Galician), a language much like Portuguese that is actively promoted by all the inhabitants of the province. And the Spanish translation of nineteenth-century American literature. It nearly took my breath away, for I had quietly decided over the course of the past year to chuck all the literary criticism business and specialize in the English translation of nineteenth-century Spanish literature. I will take up the whys and wherefores of this momentous decision later on, but for now suffice it to say that I had already begun my own work and found the parallels striking. She stood way ahead of me, of course, already having a book published by Ediciones Lustre, a highly respected Madrid publishing house. But I had this eerie feeling, again fixing my gaze on her eyes, that maybe we were kindred spirits despite being separated by a vast ocean. It was one thing to be interested in literary translation, however … for the interest to carry over to the same century, to the same two languages?

I knew The Gold Bug by Poe and remembered the cipher of the denouement. How, I wondered, had she dealt with the passage stating that e is the most frequently used letter in the English language. To say that I was hooked does not cover my response to the article and to the translator, for I resolved to reread The Gold Bug back in Winsted. I returned Ínsula to the display case, picked up the copy of the book, and scanned the titles: La caída de la casa Usher, El gato negro, Corazón traidor, El diablo en el campanario. Famous tales all: The Fall of the House of Usher, The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Devil in the Belfry, and the others, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Purloined Letter, The Cask of Amontillado, The Masque of the Red Death, and on and on. It wasn’t the complete tales, but certainly a rich selection for readers of Spanish. I became so absorbed, reading snippets here and there, that I lost track of time. When I glanced at the big Roman-numeral clock I saw that it was way past the lunch hour, so I made photocopies of the two articles that I needed. The display case had a little notice posted saying that copies of El escarabajo de oro y otros cuentos were available in the bookstore, so I went down to Lerner Hall, bought one, exited on Broadway, and made the trek back to midtown.

A visit to the outdoor ice skating rink at Rockefeller Center was in order.

I myself never learned to ice skate, but have always enjoyed watching others, especially daughters of Eve of a certain age. Some men like to ogle nubile girls in bikinis; I like to watch lissome women who wear those short skirts that allow for ease of movement and show legs to advantage, if, that is, they’re clones of Peggy Fleming or Dorothy Hamill. Although the late afternoon had turned so cold that people wore hats, scarves tied around ears and chins, mittens or gloves, and frequently stamped their feet to increase circulation and warm frozen extremities, the place was mobbed and good cheer sparked the atmosphere. I heard at least half a dozen languages that I could pick out, and at least another half that I could not.

Before I managed to wend my way through the crowd to gaze down at the rink, one sharp-eyed couple noticed that I was unaccompanied and asked me to take a few photographs of them. Being the cheerful and courteous sort that I am, I readily complied with their request. Then several other equally sharp-eyed tourists saw how willingly I posed the first couple and eagerly asked the same. I handled four of these photographic appeals and apologetically turned down the fifth, saying that I urgently needed to be elsewhere, which of course was the truth—I needed to jockey for a position to check out the skaters.

As it was a Friday, there were only a handful of children, and I assumed that they were the offspring of tourists who had taken them out of school to visit the big city. All the skaters were bundled up against the cold with festive hats and scarves, and all of them radiated good cheer. The homogeneity stopped there, because in ability they varied greatly. Some barely managed to remain upright; some windmilled precariously; some wobbled on the ice; others skated with confidence, if not grace; a few glided securely; and one skated with flair, and when she came out of the turn, parallel to the NBC Building, I spotted her in a matter of seconds; what I mean is that I spotted those legs in a matter of seconds. And then I beheld a most interesting sight. Weaving through the throng, Peggy Immarino, the adjunct professor of photography at Northern Connecticut State University and a friend in the making, a good friend, caught up with Dean Diana, tapped her on the shoulder, and bussed her effusively and openly. Owing to the swirl of skaters who jostled one another, I couldn’t tell if the kiss was planted on Diana Whitaker’s cheek or on her mouth, but Diana leaned into her, shoulder to shoulder, and they skated with big smiles, each woman with an arm around the other’s waist.

Hmm. Qu’est-ce qui se passe?, I wondered. Or as Nelson would put it, ¿Qué pasa, Man? Now. Not one to judge by mere appearances, I decided to put the best spin on what I had just glimpsed and not look askance at it. Therefore, I glossed over the public display of affection and turned my attention to my free evening, inasmuch as I found myself without theater or concert tickets. I had a standing invitation to cuddle with Elena (la ponceña tetuda that Tío Willie caught me ogling so many summers ago), but I made the decision to get acquainted with another latina, a compostelana to be exact, since I now knew that Pilar Orsini Oquendo was from Santiago de Compostela. First, though, I would betake my hungry self—after a siesta, a long and hot shower, a change of clothes, and several potent margaritas—to Little Cuba’s Nuevitas Restaurant and treat myself to the delightfully peasant dishes of caldosa and ropa vieja.

TWO

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¡Santiago y a ellos! (Saint James and at them!) was the resounding battle cry of knights inspired by Saint James the Moorslayer astride his white horse, as the fifteenth-century Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, with their abiding faith, instituted the Inquisition and relentlessly rid Spain of the infidels that muddied the waters of the Catholicism that they sought to make pure.

Santiago de Compostela, Saint James of the Field of the Star, was the apostle Saint James the Greater. Legend has it that one night early in the ninth century starlight fixed its beam in the shape of a star on a desolate spot while angels sang, which caused an old hermit to alert the local bishop. As His Excellency was mindful of the star that had guided the Magi to the Infant Jesus, he caused the site to be cleared and excavated, only to have the diggers discover a crypt in which lay the body of Santo Iago, as he was called in the old Spanish of the time, unravaged by decomposition, untouched by the passage of eight hundred some years. They knew that it was the Apostle Saint James because, according to another legend, they saw his name chiseled in the stone. Thus did King Alfonso II proclaim Santiago, Saint James, the patron saint and defender of Spain, and thus did a shrine arise, and a church, and a monastery, and a town, and thus did the cult grow until Santiago de Compostela became, together with Rome and Jerusalem, one of the three holy cities of Christendom, the destination of millions of pilgrims who have followed the Way of Saint James since the Middle Ages in order to revere the final resting place of one who had walked with the Lord and Messiah. Santiago de Compostela, the cultural star of Spain’s northwestern province of Galicia, where many of the residents chose to speak gallego with one another, their heritage language, even though they also all knew castellano, or what the rest of the world called Spanish; Santiago de Compostela, that boasted one of the most beautiful and ornate cathedrals in all of western Europe; Santiago de Compostela, where in the winter and spring it rained so much and so often that local stores and tourist shops displayed decals reading, Santiago de Compostela, donde la lluvia es arte, Santiago de Compostela, where rain is an art form. To live in Santiago was to live in a past that had created a rich present, and to live in a present that treasured a glorious past.

Pilar Orsini Oquendo loved her hometown of Santiago. And yet … for as much as she loved it, the sights and sounds and smells of it, she had made the wrenching decision to leave it, because she could not claim that the baby she had determined not to abort was Gonzalo’s; the number of months would play her false. She knew in her heart of hearts that she would never be able to deal with the stares, the questions, the doubts, the snickers, the ugly innuendo. Gonzalo was the love of her life and only a couple of weeks after his death she has sex with the first fulano that comes along and gets pregnant by him? Dr. Manuel Ros de Olano, a trusted friend whom she had known for years, had confirmed the pregnancy a week ago.

Pilar Orsini Oquendo—tall and trim like her father and dark-haired and sloe-eyed like her mother—was the youngest child of Carl Orsini, a native of North Smithfield, Rhode Island, site of Samuel Slater’s early eighteenth-century textile mills, and Paloma Oquendo Pedraza, a native of Mondoñedo, a small town in the Galician province of Lugo noted for its ancient Roman Wall and its centuries-old cathedral with Romanesque and Baroque architectural features. Long known as a resting place for pilgrims following the Way of Saint James, Mondoñedo’s travelers introduced Paloma to the sounds of numerous foreign languages and she became fascinated by them. As a young schoolgirl she began the study of English and French, while at home her mother ensured that she learn gallego by reading the works of Álvaro Cunqueiro, Mondoñedo’s most famous literary son. Then she went off to Spain’s capital city, where she lived with her married sister Mari Carmen and her husband Fermín while studying at Madrid’s Escuela Oficial de Idiomas, earning advanced certificates in English and French, and an intermediate in Italian.

It was because of her knowledge of English that Paloma met Carl Orsini. Late one Friday morning, while she was waiting in line at the ticket office of the Teatro Español on Calle del Príncipe, a soft-spoken young man in front of her was having a terrible time explaining himself in heavily accented, and barely passable, Spanish. She actually heard two things—the young man trying his best to ask for a ticket to the same play that she and Mari Carmen and Fermín wanted to see and the woman at the booth being curt and abrupt. From the suit of clothes and the crew cut Paloma guessed American, and annoyed that the ticket seller was so brusque, she took a chance and spoke to him in English.

Can I help? Forgive me for interrupting, she said to him. She speaks awfully fast and is anxious to close the booth.

Carl looked as if an angel had descended from on high to spirit him out of darkness, and broke into the smile that Paloma would remember for the rest of her life. He said that he wanted a ticket for the following night, and she herself wanted three for the same session. He thanked her effusively, saying as they exited the theater, Thank you very much. I have a great deal of work to do. I’m going to movies and to plays in order to hear Spanish continuously, hear it when I don’t have to respond. Then, when I begin to understand, maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to say something and be understood myself.

Paloma crossed Príncipe to Plaza de Santa Ana, and halfway across the square, on a whim, she turned around to see whether the American had disappeared; he was watching her and waved, and, after a moment’s hesitation, she waved back.

During the intermission between the second and third acts, he saw her and waved again, and again she waved back. Mari Carmen saw the exchange and told her sister to go and invite him to join them for late-night tapas and drinks.

No sabe decir cuatro palabras, said Paloma. He can’t say a thing.

Las dirás tú, said Mari Carmen. Además, me dan ganas de oírte hablar ingles. You can, said Mari Carmen. Besides, I feel like hearing you speak English.

So Paloma translated back and forth. Mari Carmen liked that El señor Carl Orsini treated her sister graciously; and Fermín liked that Carl politely offered him one of his Pall Malls before lighting up himself, liked that he offered to pay at the first bar, although he categorically refused to allow him to pay; and Paloma liked that he complimented her and could tell that he meant it.

You speak English so well, he said when they were at the second bar on Calle de la Cruz.

Thank you, she replied. But I know I have an accent.

Very slight, which is nothing, he said. You’re fluent. That’s what matters.

The streets were crowded, the restaurants were crowded, and the bars were jammed, and meaningful talk was difficult. It was at the third bar, Sol y Sombra on Calle de la Victoria, at a rear table where they could actually hear one another, where Fermín asked the question that, all four would later agree, led to the marriage of Paloma Oquendo Pedraza, española, and Carl Orsini, norteamericano.

Since you’re not here as a tourist and want to learn Spanish, what brings you to La Villa del Oso? I mean why Madrid and not some other city in Spain.

Well, Carl began, at the University of Rhode Island I majored in Finance and minored in Spanish, and he paused and smiled, and now I wish I had majored in Spanish and minored in Finance. Because on Monday I start my new job as assistant director of the main office of American Express, and he withdrew a small notebook from the breast pocket of his suit coat, at the corner—and I located the site yesterday afternoon—of Calle Marqués de Cubas and Plaza de las Cortes, across the street from the Palace Hotel. Paloma had stilled. And luckily I’ve been assigned an assistant—a … a mindoni-something. Mindoniense? Is that right? At all events, a woman who lives here in Madrid, although she’s not from Madrid, but who, I’m told, is fluent in English. And I’ll need the help, believe me, I’ll need the help, until I learn to speak something other than my terrible schoolboy Spanish, and he glanced at Paloma, smiled again and said, I mean castellano. Paloma sat there, staring at him.

¡Vaya explicación! Vamos, hija, ¿qué ha dicho? asked Mari Carmen as she saw her sister stare. Some explanation! Come on, girl, what did he say? Paloma, who had been working at American Express for nearly five months, had been told that she would be working under a new assistant director, an American, beginning el próximo lunes.

After vacating her University of Santiago de Compostela office and relinquishing the key, Pilar slowly exited the building trying to hold her head high in order to return the cheerful greetings of friends and colleagues who would soon be puzzled to learn that she had requested, and been granted, an emergency personal leave for the duration of the academic year that had just begun. A family matter, she had explained, which, in Pilar’s mind was not a complete fabrication. She came to a halt on the narrow sidewalk and looked up at her window, recalling the work and study that had gone into the oposiciones, the competitive examinations that resulted in her full professorship in American literature and made her the number one resource person for translations from and into American English.

From where she stood Pilar had walked countless times to the side entrance of the cathedral, at the courtyard, where this past year, two nights before the fireworks of the 25th, she and Gonzalo, Merche and her husband Jaime, and Concha and Jorge had gone to the Milladoiro concert that hadn’t begun until one-thirty in the morning. But Milladoiro with its bagpiper was the best Galician folklore group ever, and what was the week of celebrations in honor of the apóstol for if not to celebrate? Afterward they had gone to the chocolatería at four o’clock, so many revelers milling around it seemed like four o’clock in the afternoon, not four o’clock in the morning. The happy recollections nearly made her dizzy. She vacillated, even though she had always gone to the cathedral to meditate, and not because she was so religious, but because that special house of God nearly always brought her peace, nearly always instilled calm in her spirit. That overcast afternoon, though, she vacillated.

How, she wondered, could she experience peace now? How could she experience calm now? How could she understand? He had made no attempt to see her since that night of her defilement on the Areal do Xunqueiro. There was only the letter that she had found on her desk up there in the office—the letter that she had not read, the letter that she had torn into shreds, violently torn into shreds. Pilar had seen him, though. Once. From a distance. At the train station when she had gone to meet Merche and her two little ones returning from Padrón. As tall as he was it was impossible not to see that blond hair of his. She had hung back, watching him say his good-byes to his family before boarding the train, which she later learned was destined for Avilés, in the neighboring province of Asturias. All of a sudden she heard an anxious voice. ¡No se te ocurra cruzar la calle!, and the child being admonished by his mother came to a stop by bumping into Pilar, and she caught him so that he wouldn’t stumble into the street. The mother, all aflutter, thanked her and scolded her little boy. That’s what it is, Pilar thought. His life from her life. Yes, his or her life from my life. I’ll go. The cathedral has always been my spiritual home. She barely heard the click-clack of her own high heels on the pavement.

Pilar sat in the back, then knelt, then sat again. Dr. Ros de Olano, who had delivered her sister Merche’s two boys, was one of four people in whom Pilar knew she had to confide. Not only confide, but swear to secrecy. Because he looked upon Pilar as a favorite niece, he did not push her to divulge the identity of the rapist, did not tell her she was letting a wrong go unpunished; he embraced her as her father would have embraced her, held her as her father would have held her; and he gave her the name of an obstetrician colleague in Madrid, even offered to call him on her behalf.

She could never tell Gonzalo’s older brother Pedro; he’d want her to abort—saying that the fetus was not even a garbanzo, a chick pea—so as not to befoul Gonzalo’s memory. With his severe ways Pedro was even capable of finding her partially responsible, for Gonzalo had told her, laughing and making a joke of it, that his brother believed that she sometimes dressed provocatively.

Pilar had retorted, He finds suggestive and provocative anything short of a nun’s habit.

No le hagas caso, nena, Ignore him, my love, he had grinned at her, wiggling his nose between her breasts. You have a lot here up front to put on display and I for one like seeing it. She had cuffed him playfully.

Los hombres somos imposibles. ¿No lo sabías? We men are impossible. Didn’t you know that? he had continued, grasping a nipple through blouse and brassiere with wet lips as she laughed.

The tears ran again, and she didn’t bother to wipe them away.

The worst thing had been telling … That had been the worst thing? No, no. Telling her widowed mother and sister hadn’t been the worst thing. The worst thing had already occurred. After she had sat them down, she clasped her mother’s left hand with her right and her sister’s right with her left and began, What I’m going to tell you, you have to keep to yourselves. Not a word to a soul. Not to anyone. I beg you. If you love me, and I know for certain that you do, you have to keep it to yourselves. I don’t want anyone here to find out. Trembling and weeping and squeezing her mother’s and sister’s hands, she had told them—but she had refused to divulge the name of the rapist, for as much and as hard as they had pushed. ¡Que no! I won’t tell you! I have my reasons, she had said in desperation, pounding the table with her fist, shaking in agony. They had finally relented. Trust me and help me. When her mother, also in tears now, had asked why she would have the baby, Pilar had taken a deep breath. Why? she had replied. Because by destroying the fetus, who did not ask for life, I think I’d be destroying—no, I know I’d also be destroying—a part of myself, a part of my own life, and a part of you, Mamá, and a part of Papá, may he rest in peace.

Pilar had never given much thought to abortion, had never anguished over abortion because she had never expected to consider having one. But when Dr. Ros de Olano, resignation and heavy-heartedness in his eyes, had looked at her and opened his arms to her, Pilar’s outlook had changed forever. It wasn’t a philosophical question, or a moral question, or a religious question; it was a personal question, with emphasis—that is, the judgment that she would make—on the person part of personal. It was what, for her, was right; it was what allowed her to lay claim to humanness. Yes, a wrong had been committed, a terrible wrong. But could she undo that wrong by perpetrating what for her would be another wrong? Violation not only of an other, but also of self? It was not to say never mind the wrong that had been done her—no, no, not that, not that, which would be like looking through the reverse end of a telescope, diminishing the size of objects and thereby making them obscure; it was like looking at and examining objects through the prism of magnification, to see them more clearly. Or was it? Was there an absolute in the rightness of judgments? Would I have decided to allow this fetus, this beginning of life, to grow into a life, if I had been violada, raped, while Gonzalo was alive? Would I have asked Gonzalo to embrace this unknown life to make it a part of our life? What would I have done if he had refused? Would I have revealed to him who had done it? Why do I now see that there is a sanctity of life when before I gave it little or no thought? What would Papá say? What will Grandpa Orsini say? Because when the time comes, well before the time comes, I’ll go back to the States for the birth. This much I know for sure. I won’t contact him immediately, but I will contact him, and he won’t let me down. Of that I’m certain … and Pilar’s thoughts transported her to Rhode Island. Again tears rolled down her cheeks, and again she let them run, not wiping them away.

Paloma and Carl made the conscious decision to have their children become bilingual. As it turned out they had only the two girls: first Mercedes, whom all and sundry called Merche, and fourteen months later, Pilar. From the day they were born, at home—first at their piso in Madrid and then years later, after a hiatus in New York City, in Santiago de Compostela—they spoke to the girls only in English. Outside of the home, with other family members, as well as friends and acquaintances, it was all castellano, as it was of course with cousins and playmates and at school. The English reinforcement, the lock on the girls’ bilingualism, came about as a result of the annual summer stays, as opposed to visits, with Grandma and Grandpa Orsini in North Smithfield, Rhode Island.

After three years at American Express Carl’s vacation stretched into four weeks, but he had to take them during the month of July in order to run the office in August, when Madrid practically emptied. However, although madrileños left the capital in droves, tourists came by the thousands, and Carl would return by himself to the city called La Villa del Oso. Their usual routine, until Merche and Pilar were eleven and nine, was for Paloma and the girls to fly to the U. S. for the last two weeks of June, be joined by Carl for practically all of July, and then for Paloma, Merche, and Pilar to prolong their stay for the first two weeks of August so that the girls could go to a summer camp with their cousins Rita, Matt, and Dennis, the children of Carl’s brother Greg. Their annual sojourns were reversed when Carl was transferred to AmEx’s corporate headquarters in New York City for