Years With Laura Diaz, The (68 page)
Read Years With Laura Diaz, The Online
Authors: Carlos Fuentes
“I love you, Santiago.”
“And I love you, Enedina.”
“I love Laura Díaz a lot.”
“How wonderful that between the two of us we could recreate her life.”
“Her years. The years with Laura Díaz.”
Aura
Distant Relations
Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins.
Terra Nostra
The Campaign
The Old Gringo
Where the Air Is Clear
The Death of Artemio Cruz
The Good Conscience
Burnt Water
The Hydra Head
A Change of Skin
Christopher Unborn
Diana: The Goddess Who Hunts Alone
The Orange Tree
Myself with Others
The Buried Mirror
A New Time for Mexico
T
HE BEST NOVELISTS in the world are our grandmothers, and it is to them I owe the first memory on which this novel is based. My maternal grandmother was Emilia Rivas Gil de Macías, widow of Manuel Macias Gutiérrez; she born in Alamos, Sonora, he in Guadalajara, Jalisco; she the descendant of Spanish immigrants from Santander and, according to rumors I’ve heard, Yaqui Indians from Sonora. My grandfather Macías died tragically in 1919, leaving my grandmother with four young daughters—María Emilia, Sélika, Carmen, and my mother, Berta Macías de Fuentes.
HE BEST NOVELISTS in the world are our grandmothers, and it is to them I owe the first memory on which this novel is based. My maternal grandmother was Emilia Rivas Gil de Macías, widow of Manuel Macias Gutiérrez; she born in Alamos, Sonora, he in Guadalajara, Jalisco; she the descendant of Spanish immigrants from Santander and, according to rumors I’ve heard, Yaqui Indians from Sonora. My grandfather Macías died tragically in 1919, leaving my grandmother with four young daughters—María Emilia, Sélika, Carmen, and my mother, Berta Macías de Fuentes.
My paternal grandmother, Emilia Boettiger de Fuentes, was born in Catemaco, Veracruz, daughter of Philip Boettiger Keller, a German immigrant from Darmstadt, married to a young lady of Spanish origin, Ana María Murcia de Boettiger, with whom he had three daughters: Luisa (Boettiger de Salgado), María (Boettiger de Alvarez), and Emilia (Boettiger de Fuentes). Emilia married Rafael Fuentes Vélez, president of the National Bank of Mexico in Veracruz and son of Carlos Fuentes Benítez and Clotilde Vélez, who was attacked and mutilated on the stagecoach between Mexico City and Veracruz. A fourth Boettiger sister,
Anita, was a mulatta, the issue of a never acknowledged love affair of my great-grandfather. She was always a confident and loving member of the Boettiger family.
Anita, was a mulatta, the issue of a never acknowledged love affair of my great-grandfather. She was always a confident and loving member of the Boettiger family.
My paternal grandparents had three sons, Carlos Fuentes Boettiger, my young uncle, a promising poet, disciple of Salvador Díaz Mirón, and editor of the Xalapa magazine
Bohemian Muse
. He died in Mexico City, where he’d gone to study, at the age of twenty-one, of typhoid fever. My aunt, Emilia Fuentes Boettiger, remained unmarried for many years, taking care of my grandfather Don Rafael, who’d been afflicted with a progressive paralysis. My parents, Rafael Fuentes Boettiger and Berta Macías Rivas, married in January 1928. I was born in November of that year and inherited the constellation of stories my family transmitted to me.
Bohemian Muse
. He died in Mexico City, where he’d gone to study, at the age of twenty-one, of typhoid fever. My aunt, Emilia Fuentes Boettiger, remained unmarried for many years, taking care of my grandfather Don Rafael, who’d been afflicted with a progressive paralysis. My parents, Rafael Fuentes Boettiger and Berta Macías Rivas, married in January 1928. I was born in November of that year and inherited the constellation of stories my family transmitted to me.
But many other stories were told to me by two magnificent survivors of “the years with Laura Díaz,” Doña Julieta Olivier de Fernández Landero, widow of the Orizaba industrialist Manuel Ferná
ndez Landero, and Doña Ana Guido de Icaza, widow of the lawyer and writer Xavier Icaza López-Negrete, who appears as a character in this novel. I have emotional and grateful memories of them both.
ndez Landero, and Doña Ana Guido de Icaza, widow of the lawyer and writer Xavier Icaza López-Negrete, who appears as a character in this novel. I have emotional and grateful memories of them both.Finally, I began
The Years with Laura Díaz
during a detailed, informative, and most of all affecting trip with my friend Federico Reyes Heroles to places that are part of our shared background: Xalapa, Coatepec, Catemaco, Tlacotalpan, and the Tuxtlas, Santiago and San Andrés. My very special thanks to Federico and his wife, Beatriz Scharrer, herself deeply schooled in agrarian life and the German migration to the state of Veracruz.
The Years with Laura Díaz
during a detailed, informative, and most of all affecting trip with my friend Federico Reyes Heroles to places that are part of our shared background: Xalapa, Coatepec, Catemaco, Tlacotalpan, and the Tuxtlas, Santiago and San Andrés. My very special thanks to Federico and his wife, Beatriz Scharrer, herself deeply schooled in agrarian life and the German migration to the state of Veracruz.
London
August 1998
August 1998
Copyright © 1999 by Carlos Fuentes
English translation copyright © 2000 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Designed by Abby Kagan
eISBN 9780374706425
First eBook Edition : March 2011
Requests for permission to make copies of any page of this book must be sent to Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC 19 Union Square West, New York, NY 10003.
This is a translation of
Los An
os con Laura Díaz.
Los An
os con Laura Díaz.Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the excerpt from “Vegetation,” from
Canto General, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition,
by Pablo Neruda, edited and translated by Jack Schmitt, copyright © 1991 Fundación Pablo Neruda, Regents of the University of California Reprinted by permission of the University of California Press.
Canto General, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition,
by Pablo Neruda, edited and translated by Jack Schmitt, copyright © 1991 Fundación Pablo Neruda, Regents of the University of California Reprinted by permission of the University of California Press.
Published by arrangement with Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.
Text set in Walbaum MT
First Harvest edition 2001
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