All Roads Lead to Austen (26 page)

“I'm
stuffed
!” Erna groaned in agreement. “Now we'll be able to soak up plenty of alcohol!” Sated, we set off for a downtown bar to attend a “
Cuentería
.” A “
cuento
” is a story, and a
Cuentería
, a public storytelling event. A sexy vampire tale was in progress when we entered. We ordered some beers then scanned the crowded, colorful locale, full of Asunción's artistic set, for a place to sit. In the press around the storyteller there were two seats left, one on a bench and the other on a wooden rocking horse.

“Guest of honor gets the pony!” Erna said, raising her glass for a toast. This could work out well; when I couldn't hold the horse upright, it would be time to cut me off.

The featured storyteller was a handsome Colombian touring South America to share stories, and I was thrilled that I could follow his tales without trouble. I'd been told that Colombians speak the clearest Spanish on the continent. I was also impressed that this group of people, drinking heavily, was up for an experience that took some concentration. I'd certainly never attended anything similar in the United States.

Several nights later, Erna and I headed out for more cultural diversion. The same school that had hosted my talk on Austen was, I'd been pleased to learn, staging a version of Casaccia's
La
Babosa
. When the curtain rose, however, Erna and I could only gawk and giggle like schoolgirls. The announcements had failed to note that the play was in
Jopará
, a mix of Spanish and
Guaraní
, the local indigenous language. Even Erna, linguist that she is, was at a loss. We stuck it out, however, trading whispered quips throughout. “Well, now I can still read the novel without having the ending spoiled,” she said as we left, “since I have no idea what the hell just happened!”

Paraguay is the only South American country with two official languages—Spanish and
Guaraní
, spoken by more than half of the population. Before I'd arrived, I'd assumed that the attitude toward indigenous cultures in Paraguay would be the same as in the other countries I'd visited. Yet another bad assumption.
Guaranís
face social and economic discrimination, but their culture and language aren't marginalized the way the
Mapuche
, for instance, are in Chile. Pinochet, Chile's dictator between 1973 and 1989, would never have addressed the public in
Mapuche
, even if he'd known the language (which he didn't). Alfredo Stroessner, Paraguay's strongman from 1954 to 1989, was bilingual and frequently made political speeches in
Guaraní
.

Cruising the local bookstores, I found many titles in
Guaraní
, including an important children's series sponsored by the novelist Roa Bastos that contained dual-language titles. I'd picked up a volume called
Folklore
Paraguayo
to get a better sense for the indigenous literature. Many of the stories promote respect for the environment and local wildlife by illustrating what happens to greedy hunters who kill mothers raising babies or people who deplete resources thoughtlessly.

Knowing that children were the intended audience, however, I was taken aback by the violence. One specific message for kids was loud and clear: don't go into the jungle alone. You might, for one thing, get treed by the
Aó Aó
. It's like a sheep, except
evil
. It'll dance around the tree on its hind legs bleating, “
aóaó aóaó aóaó!
” after which it will dig up the roots, shake you to the ground, then eat you. Or there's the
Jasyjatere
, which disguises itself as a bird. It'll lead you into the jungle and show you how to enjoy honey without getting stung. Problem is, when it decides to kiss you on the lips (and yes, it
will
want to kiss you on the lips), it will scorch your mouth, leaving you mute and simpleminded, at which point it'll abandon you in the swamps and seek its next victim.

The originals of European fairy tales are certainly bloodier than the versions kids in the United States now enjoy, but somehow, I still couldn't picture the Reverend or Mrs. Austen reading Jane and Cassandra or their brothers anything like these
Guaraní
stories at bedtime. Presumably, the stakes were higher in Paraguay for children straying off, hence the heavier scare tactics. Had little Jane wandered too far from the rectory, at worst she could have gotten nipped by a badger or a neighbor's dog (or chased by a cow). Paraguayan jungles hold greater dangers.

Still, some of the stories are downright lurid—especially that of the
Curupí
, whose penis is so long, he wraps it around his waist like a belt (if you'd like that last bit in
Guaraní
: “
Tuichaiterei
ndaje
hapi'a. Péva ipukuetereígui chugui ndaje, olia iku'áre, pono oikupy lia mba'e chupe
”). Any girl foolish enough to range beyond shouting distance from Mom and Dad will get lassoed by his freakish male member—the book actually has an illustration of this—and raped. If she manages to survive, she'll be stark raving mad.

In
Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen
, Fay Weldon suggests that single women in Austen's time could find some comfort in celibacy, knowing that any married woman had a good chance of dying from childbirth; two of Austen's sisters-in-law did. Even with this possibility severely reduced by the mid-twentieth century, if I'd heard the story of the
Curupí
as a little girl, I'd probably still be a virgin.

I had one more literary activity before the
Emma
reading night: the
Pride
and
Prejudice
gathering with
Las
Amigas
. While guests like me were welcome, the key to official
Amiga
membership was being an ex-patriot. Kitty, the hostess, was an American married to a Paraguayan, as were the other women, so this conversation, for a change, was in English. When Erna and I arrived, we were greeted by Kitty's pack of ten leaping, friendly dogs who were lured off into the central courtyard when lunch was served, more delicious food than all of us, including the dogs, could have managed. Like Dorrie and Martín, these were people living toward the high end of Asunción's social ladder, yet they were warm and unpretentious.

Las
Amigas
had read
Pride
and
Prejudice
and now were gathering to watch the Knightley/Macfadyen film. Erna naturally livened up the viewing with snarky commentaries. During Mr. Collins's inept preaching she cried out, “Oh
lord
, he's not even good at
that
!” with such a combination of disbelief, outrage, and disgust that our laughter drowned out the rest of the scene.

While I was interested in their opinions on
Pride
and
Prejudice
, the fact that I'd already discussed the novel both in Guatemala and Ecuador led me to focus more once we made the (apparently inevitable) shift from Austen's world to Asunción.

An attractive woman in her forties named Susan made the leap first: “All of this concern about dances, marriage, about domestic life, it's really still the same for many women here today.” I soon discovered that she was married to the grandson of novelist Gabriel Casaccia, author of
La
Babosa
. Asunción's cultural circles are small enough that there aren't many degrees of separation. A week or two there and you know someone who knows someone who knows Roa Bastos or Josefina Plá or, in this case, Casaccia.

The fact that Asunción can be a small world, socially speaking, surfaced again when the conversation turned to several books that had come out recently on Paraguay. “There's one you've got to read on Madame Lynch called
The
News
from
Paraguay
,” Kitty the hostess told me. “She's a controversial figure from our history.” Madame Lynch was President López's lover and
de
facto
first lady. Irish by birth and a known courtesan, she was scorned by his family. She scorned them right back. Lily Tuck's novel recounts how Madame Lynch invited López's family and friends for a sumptuous dinner on a river barge. When they crowded the buffet but spurned the hostess, Lynch had the feast, plates and all, dumped into the river. She ate alone and let them watch, increasingly hungry and panicked as she held them hostage for a full day. Lesson: don't mess with the Irish!

“I've already read a bit about her,” I answered. “And some other things on Paraguay, too.”

“Well, not all the writers who come here for research are very polite,” Linda, another of the
Amigas
, added. “Many of us have opened our homes to people who've turned around and written some unflattering things. That one woman, you know who I mean—” she gave the group a meaningful look “—she certainly won't get invited back.”

The others nodded in agreement. Since they knew I was working on a book, I suddenly found myself the subject of some speculative looks.

“I'd never abuse anybody's hospitality!” I assured them.

I can see why
Las
Amigas
were concerned on the subject. Who would want to find themselves insulted or turned into a caricature in print? Once the cat was out of the bag that those fabulous novels “By a Lady” were actually by humble Jane Austen, her friends and neighbors must have thought twice about exposing any silliness in front of her, lest they turn into a Mr. Woodhouse, a Reverend Elton, or a Miss Bates.

But while many people suspect that Mrs. Bennet is based on Austen's own mother, I think that's selling Austen's creativity short. She was writing novels, not memoirs. Either way, Austen was discreet enough in her fiction that if she were skewering friends and family members, we're not sure which ones. No doubt her sharpest comments were saved for her private letters anyway, which Cassandra knew better than to share with outsiders. The history lover in me mourns the loss of those letters profoundly—but discretion does have its virtues.

***

When
Las
Amigas
learned I was staying downtown in a hotel on the fringe of the city's red light district, they'd assumed I'd be murdered by muggers before I could hold my
Emma
group. Fortunately, they were wrong. But I did get a few surprises when I showed up at the classroom in the Roosevelt Library to meet with the
Emma
readers. Tony, the teacher who'd requested the group, had been enthusiastic, and so were the students, half of them boys, to whom I'd given the copies of the novel. So I assumed they'd all be there, ready to go.

Wrong again. What I found instead were three women who looked so young I assumed they were students. They weren't. They were all teachers from the school who'd attended the talk but whom I hadn't met.

“We don't know what happened to the others,” laughed a pretty girl with long, thick dark hair who introduced herself as Ana María. She didn't look a day over sixteen. “But here we are, anyway!”

Lorena, at twenty-two the oldest of the group, reminded me of the saucy, gum-cracking Italian girls from my junior high I'd tried so hard to imitate when I hit my Billy Joel phase. With shortish brown hair and a sardonic gleam in her eye, Lorena, I suspected, would have some strong opinions on Austen. About that, I was right. Alicia was the final reader. Barely twenty, with a heart-shaped face and a gentle smile, she was not as poised and elegant as Martín's friend Alicia from the
Emma
movie night. Still, though dressed in a simple blouse and jeans, this younger Alicia was just as pretty. As the night went on I could see that, although a bit shy, she was just as insightful, as well.

We waited in the nearly empty classroom a few minutes to see if anybody else would show, chatting about how my digital recorder worked and about their English studies (albeit in Spanish). Lorena finally turned the conversation to Austen. “So, what did you want to talk about with this book?” I couldn't help but remember Mercedes in Guatemala, so ready to get the ball rolling.

When I replied that I wanted to leave it open to their interests, they smiled, exchanged looks, and again, Lorena jumped in.

“Well, I couldn't help but think about how Austen creates characters just like people I know here—especially Emma and her father.”

I hadn't exactly clocked any of the other groups to see how long it took us to get around to this point, but I didn't need a stopwatch to know that this was certainly the fastest that anybody had discussed the connection between Austen and their own life and culture.

“Emma's father, how do you say his name?” Lorena continued. “Woodhow? Woodhouse? He's very sweet; he loves Emma, but to be honest, there's something about him, something not good, something that's…”

“Selfish?” I offered.

“Well, we all have our points of view, you know? And he just wanted everybody to have the same one he does. His daughters are perfect. They can't do anything wrong. That's the way Emma grew up, thinking the same thing and
definitely
not wanting any criticism.”

Lorena's volume had risen as she spoke, and her final statement reverberated strongly in the large, uncarpeted room.

“There a lot of echo here.” Alicia smiled wryly. Especially with only four of us in a space that could easily have accommodated fifty.

I nodded and pursued Lorena's point. “So, Emma's spoiled?”

“That's putting it mildly.” Alicia laughed. “She's really a very observant person, but she uses that to manipulate people. I don't like her.” She shook her head. “At first I did—because she knows what's going on around her, but from the moment she got that other girl to reject the marriage proposal, I stopped liking her.”

“The way she manipulated her,” Lorena agreed, while Ana María, clearly the quiet one of the group, nodded as well on behalf of poor little Harriet Smith. “Making her think that she was
helping
her!”

“Very selfish!” Alicia burst out. “My god, that girl thinks she's some kind of
goddess
. I really identified with the friend because to be honest, my mother's just like that, just as manipulative. I was okay with her up to that point, but after that, forget it!”

Lorena smiled and took up the challenge. “
I
liked her!”

“Oh, you liked her, eh?” Alicia raised her eyebrows and gave her friend a comic look.

“She knew what she wanted and she knew how to get it. She had a lot of confidence.” While Alicia and Ana María continued to look dubious, Lorena continued: “She was really sure of herself, and I can identify with that.”

“She's certainly a product of her environment,” Alicia conceded. “But what about that man, that Kini, Kina—”

“Knightley,” I chipped in. This was a stumper, just as Willoughby had been in Mexico and Chile. So many unpronounced letters.

“Yes, him,” Alicia continued. “I could see right away he was interested in her, but somehow it was, well…”

“Kind of strange.” Ana María joined the conversation at last with a firm pronouncement.

“Yes,” Lorena agreed, “he was constantly criticizing her.”

“Well, I don't know how that turned out because I didn't make it too far,” Alicia confessed, and the others exchanged a conspiratorial look. Had they not finished the book either? I was tempted to ask but didn't want to interrupt. Alicia continued on about Emma, comparing her own family situation to Emma's machinations with Harriet, her father, and with “poor Miss Taylor” as well. I prompted them a bit to consider the question of intention—pushy as she was, didn't Emma often have other's good in mind? Nope—not good enough.

“And the father, pretending to care about Miss Taylor,” Lorena said, shaking her head in disgust. “He just didn't want to admit he was going to miss her, so he had to act like it was bad for her to get married. So selfish!”

As Lorena and Alicia overlapped each other's harsh words on Mr. Woodhouse's behavior, Ana María speculated quietly, with a knowing look: “Well, maybe that's
why
she got married—to get
away
from that house!” The spacious room rang with our laughter.

When the subject of whether or not Miss Taylor and Emma could actually have been considered friends came up next, I explained English governesses to the little group. But when I used Jane Fairfax to illustrate how women of good family backgrounds became governesses, I was greeted with blank stares. Oh dear—did that mean they hadn't made it to Jane? Could pique with Emma and her fussy dad have kept them from getting very far in the novel?

Alicia drew us back to Austen's controversial heroine.

“When it comes to learning, well, I can really identify with Emma. I'm just the same way about starting something then dropping it, starting something else then dropping it. I've started learning Italian, I've started this and that, I learn a bit, then I drop it.”

“The beginning is usually the best part of something,” I said, empathetic. I think a lot of people today can see ourselves in this quality of Emma's. No doubt it shocked moralists when the novel came out in late 1815, but it makes her more human today.

“Identifying with her made me like her at first,” Alicia continued, “but once she made her friend reject that proposal, to do a thing like that to somebody—”

Lorena cut her off. “You know what? I thought ‘what a dummy!' about Harriet. How could she let herself be manipulated that way? That was really
stupid
.”

I couldn't help but glance at Ana María to see if she'd weigh in to tip the scales on the dispute. She smiled innocently and kept her thoughts to herself. Alicia and Lorena talked their way away from the question of
how
Emma behaved and settled instead on
why
she felt the need to direct the lives of others.

“Maybe it's because she feels lonely,” Lorena speculated.

“She's a lonely person,” Ana María nodded.

“But she's really self-sufficient,” Alicia disagreed, the frustration in her voice mounting as she spoke. “Or at least she thinks she is. I just don't know! Why is she such a busybody? I've got to finish the book to figure it out, because I don't understand! What did she
get
out of her interfering?”