Título: Palacio
Autor: Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón
Segmento: paginas 9-20
Autor: Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón
Segmento: paginas 9-20
Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón
Sergio Guitérrez Negrón nació en Caguas, Puerto Rico en 1986 pero reside en Atlanta, Georgia. Colabora mensualmente con la columna Buscapié de El Nuevo Día. Ha traducido a algunos poetas anglosajones y poetas puertorriqueños con distintos fines. Ha publicado algunos relatos en antologías y revistas. Desde hace algunos años mantiene la página la Mueca Periférica (www.sergiocarlos.net) en la que representa, en las palabras de Negrón, "una educación constante, un proceso de crecimiento que no sólo consta en la recopilación de [sus] propios textos, sino de una conversación in absentia que [tiene] con otros autores". Palacios es su primera novela.
Sergio Guitérrez Negrón nació en Caguas, Puerto Rico en 1986 pero reside en Atlanta, Georgia. Colabora mensualmente con la columna Buscapié de El Nuevo Día. Ha traducido a algunos poetas anglosajones y poetas puertorriqueños con distintos fines. Ha publicado algunos relatos en antologías y revistas. Desde hace algunos años mantiene la página la Mueca Periférica (www.sergiocarlos.net) en la que representa, en las palabras de Negrón, "una educación constante, un proceso de crecimiento que no sólo consta en la recopilación de [sus] propios textos, sino de una conversación in absentia que [tiene] con otros autores". Palacios es su primera novela.
|
|
Resumén:
El texto trata de la historia de un estudiante graduado hispanohablante que vive en Atlanta, luchando para soportar la separación de su esposa, Alice, que caprichosamente se mudó a Japón hace más de un año. En el día de su cumpleaños, el estudiante graduado recibe un mensaje de Alice que se suma al dolor que él sufre como consecuencia de su separación física. El texto, narrada por el estudiante graduado, el protagonista, describe los pensamientos internos del protagonista mientras que él está en un club con su amiga, Ayesha, incapaz de pensar en otra cosa que Alice. Al regresar a casa, el protagonista abre el mensaje que ha recibido de su esposa, con la esperanza de leer algo acerca de sus planes para volver a Atlanta, pero se encuentra con un breve reconocimiento de su cumpleaños. El narrador, dolorosamente enamorado de Alice, recuerda el pasado sobre cómo todo el mundo de Atlanta había amado Alice en Atlanta, rememora cómo se conocieron en una cena y cómo por la mañana después de su primera noche juntos, él ya se había enamorado.
El texto trata de la historia de un estudiante graduado hispanohablante que vive en Atlanta, luchando para soportar la separación de su esposa, Alice, que caprichosamente se mudó a Japón hace más de un año. En el día de su cumpleaños, el estudiante graduado recibe un mensaje de Alice que se suma al dolor que él sufre como consecuencia de su separación física. El texto, narrada por el estudiante graduado, el protagonista, describe los pensamientos internos del protagonista mientras que él está en un club con su amiga, Ayesha, incapaz de pensar en otra cosa que Alice. Al regresar a casa, el protagonista abre el mensaje que ha recibido de su esposa, con la esperanza de leer algo acerca de sus planes para volver a Atlanta, pero se encuentra con un breve reconocimiento de su cumpleaños. El narrador, dolorosamente enamorado de Alice, recuerda el pasado sobre cómo todo el mundo de Atlanta había amado Alice en Atlanta, rememora cómo se conocieron en una cena y cómo por la mañana después de su primera noche juntos, él ya se había enamorado.
Desafíos
- Uno de mis desafíos con el texto original es la omisión de los pronombres sujetos, específicamente la omisión del pronombre sujeto "yo" como el texto original está escrito en la primera persona.
- La traducción de la imaginería y los modismos fue un desafío, específicamente la traducción de la frase "una pecara de gestas aburridas con inclinación a la hipérbole" (Negrón 14) entre otros.
- La traducción del cambio del código del lenguaje del texto original en que las palabras utilizadas en inglés suenan como palabras en español, el lenguaje del texto original, que tienen el mismo sentido.
- El tono poético, casi filosófico, del texto original es difícil de mantener en el texto traducido al mismo tiempo asegurando que el texto de meta suena natural.
- La traducción de frases cortas del texto original que son consideradas gramaticalmente incorrectas pero cuyas estructuras gramaticales se refieren al contenido del texto.
Traducción:
Palace
I closed my eyes to the monitor’s blue light and let myself fall against the back of the sofa. I tried to imagine Alice in a room across the world, legs crossed, reading aloud the diary of the daughter of the Japanese ornithologist who was paying for Alice’s room and board. I could almost envision the wrinkles that grew from the corners of her eyelids, the seams that had formed on her forehead, the amazement tattooed on her face as she sat totally dedicated to the absurd task she had undertaken. I momentarily caught a look at the small leather frame hugging the anachronistic snapshot of our wedding four years ago, and replied to her message, writing that I was still here, for her to continue with the story.
Nowhere else in the world, could I imagine a woman as sane as Alice working to fulfill the irrational desires of a man torn apart by his grief. The ornithologist wanted to revive his daughter through her diaries, through her birds. Alice was cooperating. Alice was becoming increasingly involved.
I would liked to have seen a recent photo in the margin next to her instant messenger window, but the one that automatically appeared was now three years old. When she wrote me that first email a while back, I pictured her relaxed with a clear mind like she had just taken a vacation. However, in the past few days, in which we transitioned from e-mail to instant messenger this changed. Had we lived in another era-like that of the telephone, for example-I could have said that I noticed a difference in her, that her voice was now caught on the high notes. Through the Internet, the only evidence I had that she was falling off the rails, the only indication that something was bothering her, was the speed with which she responded and the spelling errors she let escape.
I was certain something had happened.
She wrote three lines that I received all at the same time, the messages jumping between topics. The last sentence proved me right.
I need your help, cariño.
I didn’t hesitate, didn’t doubt for a moment that I’d move heaven and earth if she asked me to.
Her abandonment did not matter.
Whatever you need, Alice. What happened? Are you okay?
I was preparing myself a tuna fish salad when I heard the notification from my laptop. I thought it was another email from my advisor and decided to ignore it. Decided to ignore everything until the clock struck five in the afternoon. My intention: a partial withdrawal from the world.
Exactly twenty-eight years ago, my mother gave birth in a birthing pool arranged by my au courant aunt, her midwife. No one could ever tell me the exact hour of my birth. My aunt had forbidden watches from the beach cabana in which the whole thing took place. She said electronic devices caused unhealthy vibrations. My mother always laughed whenever my aunt would say this. Since I moved to Atlanta, almost five years ago, every birthday my mother called me at nine in the morning, told me this story, blessed me, and let me know that she had sent some money. As soon as she had called this morning, I started my day. My plans were simple: I would eat lunch, read a collection of poems that I had checked out of the library for this very occasion, open the blinds, let the winter light filter through the room, and watch a movie by Wong Kar-Wai. In the evening, my friend Ayesha would pick me up to go to a jazz club.
It was after the movie, just before Ayesha knocked on my door, that I saw the email.
It was Alice. The sender line, an orphan without a surname, only contained her first name, as if the message were spam mail, the result of some scam artist’s gimmick. The line lacked Walsch, her father’s last name and the Vega that was added with a hyphen when we got married. I placed the cursor over her name but did not click. Even though the SUBJECT line was vacant and I had yet to read the message, I knew it was her.
My friend rang the doorbell and I shut the computer telling myself that I could read the email later. The first year of her abandonment had passed. A year in which I checked my email every minute, in which I logged on to instant messenger to see if the green dot appeared next to her name, in which I never turned off my cell phone in case she decided to call (because she could do so at any moment), in which I checked my mailbox in the morning and in the evening (in case she decided to send me a letter), in which I lay awake at night, on my side of the bed, sure that she would return with the same secrecy with which she had left.
Yes, all of this had passed.
This life, although carried out within the same home, in the same state, surrounded by the same circle of friends, was different. I had erected it from the ruins left behind and around my restored palace I raised both an iron barricade and a circle of impenetrable glass to impede assaults.
Ayesha, a graduate student in the department of interdisciplinary studies with whom I took my last course before the start of doctoral exams, took me to a new local hip spot on Peachtree Street called the Cheshire Grounds. A young trumpeter, Willow, whom many considered the secret gem of the Atlanta jazz scene, was playing that night. Ayesha was a local jazz fan. Her father had been a percussionist in a bebop group while she was growing up in Pakistan and in spite of the great battles that wore on their relationship; she told me she could always secretly count on her father’s ability to discover new performers. The man died of a heart attack a few months before we met each other and I somewhat banally attributed this to my friend’s harmless pastime. During the introductions, Ayesha stared at the trumpeter without blinking, as if in a trance. Only at the end of each song did we begin our hurried conversations. She told me about her research-a study that linked Humboldt’s trips in Latin America with graphic novels that reimagined historical events, something I never quite understood-and about a mutual friend who was a comedian that she had gone to see the night before. I smiled trying to be as present as possible. When I felt as though I had sailed away from the club to dwell on the possible contents of Alice’s message, I would start a new conversation or force myself to focus on Willow’s music. According to the sheet handed to us at the club’s entrance, the young trumpeter, four years my junior, grew up in Atlanta as the daughter of a Vietnamese couple who emigrated to the United States after the war had ended a few decades ago. That night, most of the performance served as a tribute to the legendary trumpeter Lee Morgan, a child prodigy of the late fifties who Davis and Brown took under their wings and was murdered by his wife a few decades later. The set-list also included pieces by Armstrong that had been specifically requested.
Recently, I had taken the leap from mp3s to the flesh and blood of live music and Willow was one of the best trumpeters that I had heard live. Yet, despite her talent, every time my eyes wandered to Willow’s pendant, a tiny broken silver circle hanging from a chain around the girl’s neck, I, in some incomprehensible synecdoche, found myself thinking about Alice, delving into the hole she had left behind. I was forced to shake my head, to clear my mind, but the thoughts persisted.
From the across the table, Ayesha watched me with the same melancholic fixation the characters of Kar Wai used to look at the camera. I smiled at her, as if to say it’s nothing. But she leaned toward me and uttered “Alice” in my ear. Maybe with a question mark, though, it sounded simply like an affirmation.
Ayesha did not know Alice. Nor did she know me with Alice. Our friendship belonged to my satellite existence that grew within a glass enclosure. She knew I had married, that I was married, but she never mentioned it. If she knew details, she had to have learned them from the rumors cultivated in graduate school-a fishbowl of individuals feigning nonchalance for what they thought to be huge accomplishments.
I tried to act like everything was fine until Willow closed the night with Cosmos by Nicholas Payton. When Ayesha brought me home, she waited an extra second without saying anything.
I said goodbye, went upstairs, entered my apartment, walked into the office and opened my laptop.
I quickly glanced through the plantation shutters and saw Ayesha still waiting in the parking lot. After a minute, she departed.
The email read like something you send your best friend after a long journey across the Atlantic Ocean to let them know you’ve arrived safely. It was not what I expected. Not what I wanted. It lacked a long introductory paragraph explaining her disappearance as necessary for the health of our relationship, a section detailing changes that had made her a better person, and a conclusion full of remorse. I’m lying. Really, I did not expect any of this. It’s only looking back now, that I have begun to cultivate such resentment. In the moment, I opened the window hoping for one thing only, I just wanted a single verse, a promise of return, but it was completely absent.
-Best wishes, Frankie-Alice wrote-from the Shinjuku district in Tokyo. I hope you are well. We have a lot to catch up on. Love you, Ali.
That was it. I clicked the reply button. Typed freely. Described the hell I went through that first week, those first months, the subsequent year. I explained how I tried to find something in the closet that had belonged to her, a piece of clothing to burn, a photo album with enough pictures to merit being torn into pieces, anything to obtain lasting closure, but she had taken it upon herself to leave with everything. Or almost everything. Could have been by accident or maybe an afterthought but she had left the old snapshots that decorated the table in our room. I ended by desperately asking her to please call me, as we had to talk.
But before sending the message, three clicks got rid of it all. Three thousand words returned to the emptiness from which they’d emerged. It was not what I had wanted to say. I closed my eyes for a second. I wrote something much simpler, something straight from the heart.
Alice, I miss you.
The way in which everyone admired and respected Alice was something of another world. Not one person had a negative thing to say about her-a very rare phenomenon for graduate school. That was the first thing I learned about Alice, even before I met her. This universal respect walked along the frontiers of both love and affection and the reasons for such escaped me. At first she seemed like a lovely individual, that I understood. Then my feelings intensified. The way that people spoke about her, about her aura, did no justice. I thought it was maybe a result of her intelligence-they said she was extremely bright in her field-but during social gatherings, she was not the kind of person who would interrupt a conversation to talk about her expertise like the rest of us did, like I did. Quite the contrary. She barely mentioned what she was working on unless asked a direct and completely unavoidable question. It would seem, as I discovered later, that this respect grew from her eclectic tastes or something like that: she did not like art films or unknown bands, or the obligatory nineteenth-century Russian authors. Alice was an ordinary woman, a kind and confused woman. It was the aura surrounding her that cajoled both students and teachers to willingly speak of her with this, I do not know how else to call it other than great admiration.
The first time I saw her, heard about her, was during a welcome dinner for a Lebanese professor teaching a course that semester in the history department. Something related to Arab communities in Latin America. I had been in Atlanta for about a month and was invited merely because this professor spoke Spanish. I prepared a salad in a glass-serving dish so I would not arrive empty handed. Alice was the only person in the house who did not speak Spanish. When we arrived, I was told Alice was someone I should get to know as at that point, we had still yet to meet. Just before the end of dinner, someone introduced us. She shook my hand firmly and smiled. She wore a white blouse and an oval-shaped silver pendant embedded with a piece of onyx that seemed to almost break it, hung from her neck.
I do not remember what we talked about exactly. Perhaps she asked me how I was adapting to my change in location, in life, in language. I struggled to pronounce my English clearly so that I would be understood. I told her this and she laughed, said that she had tried to soften her southern accent for sole aesthetic purposes. I told her I liked the accent. Perhaps because it was the first time I had heard it in person. Perhaps only because it came from her lips. I think it was then that she told me to never confess being happy in Atlanta, even if I was. Said that this city is where you unintentionally end up, it was the southern martyrdom, detached from the south for the rest of the Yankees. I laughed, told her I liked the city. She told me that I had already begun to go astray, and would never get very far if I kept it up.
The rest happened without much notice. We met a few weeks later at the library and decided to have lunch. It was followed by dinner, an evening of cocktails, a concert, hiking through a few national parks, a few movies and one day I woke up in her bed. She was asleep on her side. The night before she told me that she did not want to rush things. We settled for oral pleasures. She was shirtless; the sheet traced her bare back. Without waking her, I got up to get some water. I quickly came back to the room but instead of returning to her side, I stood watching her. She slept with her hands placed one over the other, head on top, resembling one of those old paintings found in children’s books. In this position, her left breast pushed against her bulging right. Her beautiful little nipples almost the color of the rest of her skin.
I couldn’t fall back to sleep that morning so I went to the living room, took a book from one of the bookshelves, and sat on the couch. While a relentless rainstorm lashed at the apartment balcony, I read. The place was small, felt homey. She told me later that all her belongings were inherited from family members who had passed away. The double bed, built for both man and wife, from her late grandfather. The red sofa from her uncle, may he rest in peace. The daybed from her great-grandfather. The carpets from one of her mother’s moves. Her home was full of different pieces-boxes, paintings, furniture, and anachronistic adornments-that traced her family’s first century in America and the Walsch’s journey through the south.
Before she woke up, when the rain had stopped, I went to a bakery that I had seen the night before and bought three pounds of French bread, two coffees, and a few dulces de hojaldre, sweet puff pastries. When I called her to breakfast, she smiled and, intensifying her accent to sound more cartoon-like, remarked that I was a strange type by her country’s standards. I told her that in mine, this was customary. She asked me if I was serious. Of course, the Caribbean man is an ideal suitor. I noticed a delicate stitching on her forehead, fine wrinkles that grew from the corners of her eyes when she smiled. When I noticed my accent had lost its sarcasm, I explained it was, of course, a joke. With her, I felt comfortable. Really comfortable. The kind of comfort you dream of, the one in which families are ideally raised, what you normally feel when you’re alone. Perhaps you could even say that at that moment I fell in love with Alice, with the smell of her skin, handmade lavender soap.
Palace
I closed my eyes to the monitor’s blue light and let myself fall against the back of the sofa. I tried to imagine Alice in a room across the world, legs crossed, reading aloud the diary of the daughter of the Japanese ornithologist who was paying for Alice’s room and board. I could almost envision the wrinkles that grew from the corners of her eyelids, the seams that had formed on her forehead, the amazement tattooed on her face as she sat totally dedicated to the absurd task she had undertaken. I momentarily caught a look at the small leather frame hugging the anachronistic snapshot of our wedding four years ago, and replied to her message, writing that I was still here, for her to continue with the story.
Nowhere else in the world, could I imagine a woman as sane as Alice working to fulfill the irrational desires of a man torn apart by his grief. The ornithologist wanted to revive his daughter through her diaries, through her birds. Alice was cooperating. Alice was becoming increasingly involved.
I would liked to have seen a recent photo in the margin next to her instant messenger window, but the one that automatically appeared was now three years old. When she wrote me that first email a while back, I pictured her relaxed with a clear mind like she had just taken a vacation. However, in the past few days, in which we transitioned from e-mail to instant messenger this changed. Had we lived in another era-like that of the telephone, for example-I could have said that I noticed a difference in her, that her voice was now caught on the high notes. Through the Internet, the only evidence I had that she was falling off the rails, the only indication that something was bothering her, was the speed with which she responded and the spelling errors she let escape.
I was certain something had happened.
She wrote three lines that I received all at the same time, the messages jumping between topics. The last sentence proved me right.
I need your help, cariño.
I didn’t hesitate, didn’t doubt for a moment that I’d move heaven and earth if she asked me to.
Her abandonment did not matter.
Whatever you need, Alice. What happened? Are you okay?
I was preparing myself a tuna fish salad when I heard the notification from my laptop. I thought it was another email from my advisor and decided to ignore it. Decided to ignore everything until the clock struck five in the afternoon. My intention: a partial withdrawal from the world.
Exactly twenty-eight years ago, my mother gave birth in a birthing pool arranged by my au courant aunt, her midwife. No one could ever tell me the exact hour of my birth. My aunt had forbidden watches from the beach cabana in which the whole thing took place. She said electronic devices caused unhealthy vibrations. My mother always laughed whenever my aunt would say this. Since I moved to Atlanta, almost five years ago, every birthday my mother called me at nine in the morning, told me this story, blessed me, and let me know that she had sent some money. As soon as she had called this morning, I started my day. My plans were simple: I would eat lunch, read a collection of poems that I had checked out of the library for this very occasion, open the blinds, let the winter light filter through the room, and watch a movie by Wong Kar-Wai. In the evening, my friend Ayesha would pick me up to go to a jazz club.
It was after the movie, just before Ayesha knocked on my door, that I saw the email.
It was Alice. The sender line, an orphan without a surname, only contained her first name, as if the message were spam mail, the result of some scam artist’s gimmick. The line lacked Walsch, her father’s last name and the Vega that was added with a hyphen when we got married. I placed the cursor over her name but did not click. Even though the SUBJECT line was vacant and I had yet to read the message, I knew it was her.
My friend rang the doorbell and I shut the computer telling myself that I could read the email later. The first year of her abandonment had passed. A year in which I checked my email every minute, in which I logged on to instant messenger to see if the green dot appeared next to her name, in which I never turned off my cell phone in case she decided to call (because she could do so at any moment), in which I checked my mailbox in the morning and in the evening (in case she decided to send me a letter), in which I lay awake at night, on my side of the bed, sure that she would return with the same secrecy with which she had left.
Yes, all of this had passed.
This life, although carried out within the same home, in the same state, surrounded by the same circle of friends, was different. I had erected it from the ruins left behind and around my restored palace I raised both an iron barricade and a circle of impenetrable glass to impede assaults.
Ayesha, a graduate student in the department of interdisciplinary studies with whom I took my last course before the start of doctoral exams, took me to a new local hip spot on Peachtree Street called the Cheshire Grounds. A young trumpeter, Willow, whom many considered the secret gem of the Atlanta jazz scene, was playing that night. Ayesha was a local jazz fan. Her father had been a percussionist in a bebop group while she was growing up in Pakistan and in spite of the great battles that wore on their relationship; she told me she could always secretly count on her father’s ability to discover new performers. The man died of a heart attack a few months before we met each other and I somewhat banally attributed this to my friend’s harmless pastime. During the introductions, Ayesha stared at the trumpeter without blinking, as if in a trance. Only at the end of each song did we begin our hurried conversations. She told me about her research-a study that linked Humboldt’s trips in Latin America with graphic novels that reimagined historical events, something I never quite understood-and about a mutual friend who was a comedian that she had gone to see the night before. I smiled trying to be as present as possible. When I felt as though I had sailed away from the club to dwell on the possible contents of Alice’s message, I would start a new conversation or force myself to focus on Willow’s music. According to the sheet handed to us at the club’s entrance, the young trumpeter, four years my junior, grew up in Atlanta as the daughter of a Vietnamese couple who emigrated to the United States after the war had ended a few decades ago. That night, most of the performance served as a tribute to the legendary trumpeter Lee Morgan, a child prodigy of the late fifties who Davis and Brown took under their wings and was murdered by his wife a few decades later. The set-list also included pieces by Armstrong that had been specifically requested.
Recently, I had taken the leap from mp3s to the flesh and blood of live music and Willow was one of the best trumpeters that I had heard live. Yet, despite her talent, every time my eyes wandered to Willow’s pendant, a tiny broken silver circle hanging from a chain around the girl’s neck, I, in some incomprehensible synecdoche, found myself thinking about Alice, delving into the hole she had left behind. I was forced to shake my head, to clear my mind, but the thoughts persisted.
From the across the table, Ayesha watched me with the same melancholic fixation the characters of Kar Wai used to look at the camera. I smiled at her, as if to say it’s nothing. But she leaned toward me and uttered “Alice” in my ear. Maybe with a question mark, though, it sounded simply like an affirmation.
Ayesha did not know Alice. Nor did she know me with Alice. Our friendship belonged to my satellite existence that grew within a glass enclosure. She knew I had married, that I was married, but she never mentioned it. If she knew details, she had to have learned them from the rumors cultivated in graduate school-a fishbowl of individuals feigning nonchalance for what they thought to be huge accomplishments.
I tried to act like everything was fine until Willow closed the night with Cosmos by Nicholas Payton. When Ayesha brought me home, she waited an extra second without saying anything.
I said goodbye, went upstairs, entered my apartment, walked into the office and opened my laptop.
I quickly glanced through the plantation shutters and saw Ayesha still waiting in the parking lot. After a minute, she departed.
The email read like something you send your best friend after a long journey across the Atlantic Ocean to let them know you’ve arrived safely. It was not what I expected. Not what I wanted. It lacked a long introductory paragraph explaining her disappearance as necessary for the health of our relationship, a section detailing changes that had made her a better person, and a conclusion full of remorse. I’m lying. Really, I did not expect any of this. It’s only looking back now, that I have begun to cultivate such resentment. In the moment, I opened the window hoping for one thing only, I just wanted a single verse, a promise of return, but it was completely absent.
-Best wishes, Frankie-Alice wrote-from the Shinjuku district in Tokyo. I hope you are well. We have a lot to catch up on. Love you, Ali.
That was it. I clicked the reply button. Typed freely. Described the hell I went through that first week, those first months, the subsequent year. I explained how I tried to find something in the closet that had belonged to her, a piece of clothing to burn, a photo album with enough pictures to merit being torn into pieces, anything to obtain lasting closure, but she had taken it upon herself to leave with everything. Or almost everything. Could have been by accident or maybe an afterthought but she had left the old snapshots that decorated the table in our room. I ended by desperately asking her to please call me, as we had to talk.
But before sending the message, three clicks got rid of it all. Three thousand words returned to the emptiness from which they’d emerged. It was not what I had wanted to say. I closed my eyes for a second. I wrote something much simpler, something straight from the heart.
Alice, I miss you.
The way in which everyone admired and respected Alice was something of another world. Not one person had a negative thing to say about her-a very rare phenomenon for graduate school. That was the first thing I learned about Alice, even before I met her. This universal respect walked along the frontiers of both love and affection and the reasons for such escaped me. At first she seemed like a lovely individual, that I understood. Then my feelings intensified. The way that people spoke about her, about her aura, did no justice. I thought it was maybe a result of her intelligence-they said she was extremely bright in her field-but during social gatherings, she was not the kind of person who would interrupt a conversation to talk about her expertise like the rest of us did, like I did. Quite the contrary. She barely mentioned what she was working on unless asked a direct and completely unavoidable question. It would seem, as I discovered later, that this respect grew from her eclectic tastes or something like that: she did not like art films or unknown bands, or the obligatory nineteenth-century Russian authors. Alice was an ordinary woman, a kind and confused woman. It was the aura surrounding her that cajoled both students and teachers to willingly speak of her with this, I do not know how else to call it other than great admiration.
The first time I saw her, heard about her, was during a welcome dinner for a Lebanese professor teaching a course that semester in the history department. Something related to Arab communities in Latin America. I had been in Atlanta for about a month and was invited merely because this professor spoke Spanish. I prepared a salad in a glass-serving dish so I would not arrive empty handed. Alice was the only person in the house who did not speak Spanish. When we arrived, I was told Alice was someone I should get to know as at that point, we had still yet to meet. Just before the end of dinner, someone introduced us. She shook my hand firmly and smiled. She wore a white blouse and an oval-shaped silver pendant embedded with a piece of onyx that seemed to almost break it, hung from her neck.
I do not remember what we talked about exactly. Perhaps she asked me how I was adapting to my change in location, in life, in language. I struggled to pronounce my English clearly so that I would be understood. I told her this and she laughed, said that she had tried to soften her southern accent for sole aesthetic purposes. I told her I liked the accent. Perhaps because it was the first time I had heard it in person. Perhaps only because it came from her lips. I think it was then that she told me to never confess being happy in Atlanta, even if I was. Said that this city is where you unintentionally end up, it was the southern martyrdom, detached from the south for the rest of the Yankees. I laughed, told her I liked the city. She told me that I had already begun to go astray, and would never get very far if I kept it up.
The rest happened without much notice. We met a few weeks later at the library and decided to have lunch. It was followed by dinner, an evening of cocktails, a concert, hiking through a few national parks, a few movies and one day I woke up in her bed. She was asleep on her side. The night before she told me that she did not want to rush things. We settled for oral pleasures. She was shirtless; the sheet traced her bare back. Without waking her, I got up to get some water. I quickly came back to the room but instead of returning to her side, I stood watching her. She slept with her hands placed one over the other, head on top, resembling one of those old paintings found in children’s books. In this position, her left breast pushed against her bulging right. Her beautiful little nipples almost the color of the rest of her skin.
I couldn’t fall back to sleep that morning so I went to the living room, took a book from one of the bookshelves, and sat on the couch. While a relentless rainstorm lashed at the apartment balcony, I read. The place was small, felt homey. She told me later that all her belongings were inherited from family members who had passed away. The double bed, built for both man and wife, from her late grandfather. The red sofa from her uncle, may he rest in peace. The daybed from her great-grandfather. The carpets from one of her mother’s moves. Her home was full of different pieces-boxes, paintings, furniture, and anachronistic adornments-that traced her family’s first century in America and the Walsch’s journey through the south.
Before she woke up, when the rain had stopped, I went to a bakery that I had seen the night before and bought three pounds of French bread, two coffees, and a few dulces de hojaldre, sweet puff pastries. When I called her to breakfast, she smiled and, intensifying her accent to sound more cartoon-like, remarked that I was a strange type by her country’s standards. I told her that in mine, this was customary. She asked me if I was serious. Of course, the Caribbean man is an ideal suitor. I noticed a delicate stitching on her forehead, fine wrinkles that grew from the corners of her eyes when she smiled. When I noticed my accent had lost its sarcasm, I explained it was, of course, a joke. With her, I felt comfortable. Really comfortable. The kind of comfort you dream of, the one in which families are ideally raised, what you normally feel when you’re alone. Perhaps you could even say that at that moment I fell in love with Alice, with the smell of her skin, handmade lavender soap.