Then two friends appeared as I got out of the car and they took me to see several Mudejar towers, one after the other, and some of the towers were fake and others were real, and they were saying: this one is fake and this one is real, but so fast that I was never sure which were the fake ones and which were the real ones, which is odd anyway, because the name Teruel (Tirwal) means watchtower, and those giant watchtowers were used to sight enemy armies or parties coming from the west or the east, depending: if you climb to the top of an authentic Mudejar tower, you’ll surely spy a dream, and if you climb to the top of a fake Mudejar tower, you’ll surely spy a nightmare. And then there was Ana María Navales, a chain-smoker with a pronounced limp, and she sent me straight to my room in a hotel that has rooms of utter luxury in branches in other provincial capitals, but that in Teruel only has very sad and dignified rooms, as if in the rooms of that hotel — whose name I choose to forget — the din and silence of the battle of Teruel were still something real and terrifying. And it wasn’t only the room that was modest, even timid, but also the receptionist and the men who strolled idly (or so it seemed) along the corridors and looked at you as if to inquire about the course of the battle. A cubist battle, evidently, in which time and space, at least as we understand them, didn’t count for much.
When I came out of my room — still slightly feverish, I think, and feeling as sick as I had during the car trip — Ana María Navales was waiting for me, and we went off with the rest of the jury to decide which story should win the contest. As I expected, the winning story was about the civil war. Then we went out for a walk around the city, upon which night had already fallen. I remember the Mudejar towers, which appeared and disappeared in the most unlikely places. I remember streets with the names of saints. I remember priests rubbing their hands together or clasping them tight as they walked, as if they’d just received news of Buñuel’s death. I remember Aragonese voices coming from the most surprising places (even from beneath the cobblestones). I remember fortress-churches and I remember a girl with short hair, no more than twenty, who passed me without a glance. I remember the Calle de los Amantes and the Plaza del Seminario, which is crammed with ghosts. I remember the faces of two colonels, Rey d’Harcourt, who surrendered, and Colonel Barba, who didn’t. I remember the 20th corps of the Republican army, and the 18th and the 22nd, which launched the offensive in December 1937. And I remember Buñuel’s brother, Alfonso Buñuel — few people rememember him; he made disturbing collages — who was born in 1915 and died in 1961, and whose work was shown to me in Teruel, where they have the custom of remembering precisely those who are remembered by no one, or hardly anyone. I also remember a warm cardoon salad and Ana María Navales talking to me about English women writers until three in the morning, both of us chain-smoking. And I remember that Juan Villoro, in Barcelona, had told me his family came from Teruel, and I remember my vain efforts, as a result, to buy him a bottle of wine to take back to Mexico to drink with Margarita.
But the main thing, the thing I remember best, I had yet to see. I saw it that night. All of a sudden we were in the Plaza del Torico. And there, on a column sturdy enough to hold a Greek hero or Franco’s horse, was the Torico. Here was Teruel, I knew it right away, and here also was the skeptical and indomitable spirit of Aragón. The Torico is tiny, as its name indicates, a toy for an eight-year-old child; but it isn’t a toy, it’s a miniature bull. It possesses a calm elegance not devoid of pride and indifference. It’s one of the most beautiful statues I’ve seen in my life, if not the most beautiful. On the way home I got sick again and then I fell asleep. I dreamed that the Torico was walking along beside me. “Did you like Teruel?” it asked me, though only to be polite, because in reality the Torico couldn’t care less whether I had liked his city or not. “Very much,” I said. “And does it exist or not, do you think?” it asked me. Just as I was about to answer that I thought it did, the Torico turned away and I heard it say: “No, I’d rather not know.” Then I dreamed that someone in a huge dark dance hall put on an album of the pasodoble Suspiros de España, and by the time the music began, the ghost that had set it playing was gone.
Vienna and the Shadow of a Woman
I don’t know what was best about Vienna: whether it was Vienna or Carmen Boullosa. Everyone knows that Vienna is a beautiful, cultured city, the capital of a country that flirts (and its flirting may have reached the feeling-up stage) with neo-fascism. But few in Spain know who Carmen Boullosa is.
The first reports I had of her told of a very beautiful woman who was causing the Mexican lyrical poets to lose their heads. Carmen, who at the time hadn’t yet begun to write novels, was also a Mexican lyrical poet. I didn’t know what to think. All those poets head-over-heels in love with a poet struck me as excessive. On top of it all, the poets who had been dumped by Carmen (or by themselves) got to be friends, or were already friends, and had formed a de facto group or club that met once a week or once a month at bars in the center of Mexico City or in Coyoacán to revile their former beloved.
I also learned, always from third parties, that in response Carmen had started a club or society or commando group of women writers who met in secret, just like their male counterparts.
One day, in a book about contemporary Mexican literature, I saw a picture of her. She was definitely a beautiful woman, dark, tall, with huge eyes and hair down to her waist. I thought she was very attractive, but I also imagined that she must write like one of the many imitators of a magic realism made for the consumption of zombies.
Then I read something she had written and my opinion changed: Boullosa had nothing to do with imitators or imitators of imitators. I read just a few pages, but I liked what I read. And then I received an invitation to come to Vienna, where we would both give readings.
One of the good things about going to Vienna is that you can fly Lauda Air, the airline founded by the mythic Formula 1 driver, with stewardesses who dress like racetrack mechanics. The food is good, too. If you’re lucky (or unlucky) the plane may even be flown by Nikki Lauda himself. And a little while later, in the time it takes to pray three Our Fathers, you’re sitting in a taxi in Vienna, and if you’re lucky you might even be staying at the Hotel Graban, a little place on the Dorotheergasse, next to St. Stephen’s Cathedral, or in other words right in the center of the city. Though the most important thing about the Hotel Graben isn’t its location, but the fact that it’s the place where Max Brod and Franz Kafka stayed when they came to Vienna.
Outside of the hotel there’s a huge bronze plaque that says this, but I arrived at night and didn’t see the plaque, so when the receptionist told me that she was going to give me Brod’s room or Kafka’s room (I wasn’t sure which), I thought she was recommending that I read both Prague writers, which, given the country’s political situation, seemed very timely. Then, gathering my courage, I asked whether she had any information about the arrival of Frau or Fraulein Boullosa, which the receptionist pronounced Bolosa, and which made me think that even though Carmen was Mexican and I was Chilean, we shared the same Galician roots. Her answer disappointed me deeply. Not only was Frau Bolosa not at the hotel, she didn’t have a reservation, and nothing was known about her.