— Why?
— I’d lose my only way out.
— What’s that?
— I’m not even sure what it is. But I have to be here for now. That’s the only thing I can tell you.
Glenda had appeared in the hall.
— Have you met Glenda? Li inquired.
— No.
— She works at the restaurant.
— How do you do, said Glenda, greeting me. So I finally get to meet you. You’re Li’s friend. Delighted.
— Likewise.
— Li, said Glenda, Carmen’s calling you.
— When can we talk, then? I asked.
— I don’t know, but I promise we will. I can’t right now.
— Wait, if Noreña is the Melancholy Thug, who am I?
— The Man Who Stares at the Ground as He Walks. He has his charms, believe me. Just like the Melancholy Thug.
Between the living room and the kitchen there were about twenty people. Most were from the university — administrators, professors, and a few students who had come to the party, together with their partners. I knew almost all of them but didn’t have a real relationship with practically any. Seeing me in a corner of the living room trying to eavesdrop on the closest conversation and figure out how join in, Noreña came over and took me to the bar they had set up in the kitchen.
— Did it go well? he asked.
— If nothing else, I made contact again. We’ll talk later. Apparently it can’t be done in the enemy’s house.
— Carmen isn’t exactly thrilled with your being here. Naturally, I didn’t tell her that you might as easily have come without me. I don’t know what there is between you, but I’d tell Li she shouldn’t trust Carmen.
— Why not?
— Look around you. Probably everybody here felt forced to come. Carmen is a schemer, and she knows how to get what she wants. Sacrificing these hours is preferable to having her as an enemy. That’s why we’re here. Now she’s leaving, and the party is a going-away celebration she organized for herself since she got a job at the university whose name she keeps repeating ad nauseam to astonish us. But I know her very well; at the same time she’s frightened about being far away, outside her circle. She needs a companion — much better if she’s young and good looking. That is, no doubt, the spot your friend will be filling.
— Why are you telling me this?
— If you want, I’ll stop.
— That’s not what I mean. What’s it to you?
— Let’s say, I don’t want you to be fooling yourself. Li isn’t stupid. She has to be after something, too.
When she saw us standing apart from the others, Carmen Lindo crossed the living room with a wine glass in hand. Her smile could not disguise her unease. She must have been about fifty five, though with her slender build she looked younger.
— Are you having a good time? she asked, turning to me.
— A great time.
— I’m so happy. I assure you, there’s no bad blood on my part.
— Nothing less could be expected from you, said Noreña.
— Máximo, this isn’t the time, and you haven’t made me laugh in twenty years. Anyway, she said after a pause, enjoy yourself as much as you can. Here’s Juan Rafael; I’d like you both to talk with him.
The novelist was sitting by one of the doors to the balcony and roaring with laughter. He was dressed in linen trousers and jacket and wore a silk cravat around his neck. You could tell that he had taken advantage of his stay in the tropics to go to the beach.
— He came in the full dress uniform, said Noreña. Don’t trust anyone who dresses like that. I bet you anything he’s wearing loafers with no socks.
— Juan Rafael, these are some friends, said Carmen. They are excellent Puerto Rican writers.
— I wish you would just call us writers, noted Noreña, looking at the novelist’s feet and smiling.
— Hombre, anyone would think they were from Navarra! García Pardo exclaimed.
— I also meant the part about being excellent, Noreña clarified.
García Pardo had stood up to embrace us. He paused for an instant to look directly into my eyes. Presumably this combination of gestures constituted a magnanimous greeting.
— They couldn’t be at your presentation, Carmen explained, unnecessarily; I, at any rate, never had any intention of going to the event organized by his publisher’s San Juan office. But here they are now. Juan Rafael is very interested in Puerto Rican literature, Carmen added for our benefit.
— I had the pleasure of meeting several of your colleagues in Spain, he explained, and on this trip, I shared laughs again with those friends, who are doing as well as always.
— Yes, as always, Noreña cryptically remarked.
— There is so much talent on this island. Gonzalo, my editor, has informed me that Puerto Rico imports a great number of Spanish books. That is surprising when one takes the size of the country into account. It says a good deal about this culture.
— Señor García Pardo, you may not have noticed, I began to say.
— Please, you can call me Juan Rafael.
— Juan Rafael, maybe you haven’t noticed, but we’re just as Spanish speaking as any other Latin American country.
— But this isn’t a country. Not an independent one.
— Which doesn’t mean that we’re any less Spanish speaking than Spain itself. Besides, the influence of English in the Spanish Caribbean has been a historical constant that purists have often slighted or ignored. Puerto Rico is, in this instance, merely the extreme case in the Greater Antilles.
— Even so, coming from far away, it surprises one. In Spain, we always think of Argentina, of Mexico, of any of the other large countries, but never of Puerto Rico.
— Because we aren’t seen. It’s like people who go to Barcelona and are surprised that they speak Catalan there.
— Right, but what surprised me was that you import more books than many other Latin American countries with much larger populations.
— We’re a country with a passion for consumerism, said Noreña, with an irony that García Pardo couldn’t be entirely sure of.
— The important thing is that we all form part of a common milieu. The Hispanic world unites us all. You have no idea how at home I feel, as much in Mexico City as in San Juan.
— Time is wearing away at that superstition, said Noreña.
— Which?
— The one about a common milieu. The one about the great, common Hispanic world.
— What people have in common looks completely different depending on where you stand, I joined in. Spaniards can’t ignore the bigger countries, but they can skip right past all of Central America and a good part of the Caribbean and reduce the rest of Latin America to a handful of images.
— In Spain, we’re well informed about Latin America, said García Pardo.
— Do they know anything about Puerto Rico? Many of them think it’s a state in the United States, and they think that what you people call the Cuban War had nothing to do with us.
— Well, yours is a bit of a special case.
— Do you know anything about Ecuador, about Guatemala, about Paraguay, other than that they have Indians and dictators?
— But the basis for contact exists, García Pardo explained. Factors favoring unity exist: the language, the common history…
— That precisely is the basis of the superstition, said Máximo.
— I don’t follow, said García Pardo.
— They overestimate their position and therefore their historical importance.
— Hombre, it’s hard to ignore Spain!
— But it’s very easy to ignore others, Máximo explained, declaring them null from the start, from birth to death, from generation to generation, justifying everything by citing a common history of unquestionable values. Within the common tradition you mention, of which I supposedly form a part, I’ve never seen myself, nor has anyone else seen me.