Juan Vasquez - The Secret History of Costaguana

And here, to our (not very great) surprise, the versions contradict each other. According to my father, he had left the Beckman guest house two nights before, because the Isabel had already arrived in port and the provisioning stopover — wood, coffee, fresh fish — was lasting longer than expected due to some damage to the boilers. According to Antonia de Narváez, the damage to the boilers never existed, my father was still a guest, and that afternoon he hired two porters to carry his things onto the Isabel , but he had not yet spent his first night aboard the English steamer. According to my father, it was ten at night when he paid a boy in red trousers, a fisherman’s son, to go to the Gringo’s guest house and tell the lady there was a feverish man on board. According to Antonia de Narváez, the porters were the ones who told her, exchanging mocking glances and still playing with the half a real they’d received as a tip. The two versions come to agree, at least, on one fact, which in any case has left verifiable consequences and the denial of which, from a historic point of view, would be futile.

Armed with a doctor’s bag, Antonia de Narváez boarded the Isabel and from among the two hundred and seven cabins found the feverish man without asking; when she went in she found him lying on a canvas cot, not on the comfortable main bed, and covered with a blanket. She felt his forehead and did not notice a temperature of any kind; nevertheless, she took a bottle of quinine out of her medical bag and told my father that yes, he did have a bit of a temperature, that he should take five grains with his morning coffee. My father asked her whether a sponge bath with rubbing alcohol wasn’t advisable in these cases. Antonia de Narváez agreed, took two more bottles out of her bag, rolled up her sleeves, and asked the patient to remove his shirt, and for my father the penetrating smell of surgical spirit would remain forever associated with the moment when Antonia de Narváez, her hands still wet, pulled back the blanket, untied the white shawl around her neck, and with a slightly lewd movement, lifted her petticoats and straddled him atop his woolen underwear.

It was December 16 and the clock struck eleven; exactly forty-nine and a half years had passed — it’s a shame that the symmetries so dear to history couldn’t have given us a nice round half-century — since the city of Honda, which once had been a spoiled daughter of the Spaniards and key point of colonial commerce, was destroyed by an earthquake at eleven at night on June 16, 1805. The ruins still existed that night: a short distance from the Isabel were the arches of the convents, the stone corners that once were whole walls; and now I can imagine, because no rule of credibility forbids me, that the violent jolts of the camp bed might have evoked those ruins for the lovers. I know, I know: Credibility might be keeping mum, but Good Taste leaps up to reproach me for such a concession to sentimentality. But we’ll do without her opinion for an instant: everyone’s entitled to one moment of kitsch in this life, and this is mine. . because starting from this instant, I am physically present in my tale. Although to say physically might be a bit of hyperbole.

Aboard the Isabel , my father and Antonia de Narváez reproduce, in 1854, the tremors of 1805; aboard Antonia de Narváez, biology, treacherous biology, begins to do its stuff with heats and fluids; and in his room, abed and protected by a muslin mosquito net, Mr. Beckman, who has not yet read Madame Bovary , sighs with contentment, harboring not the slightest suspicion, closes his eyes to listen to the silence of the river, and almost by accident begins to sing softly to himself:

The forest on your banks by the flood and earthquake torn

Is madly on your bosom to the mighty Ocean borne.

May you still roll for ages and your grass be always green

And your waters aye be cool and sweet, oh Muddy Magdalene.

Oh, the forests on the riverbank, the cool, sweet waters. . Today, while I write not far from the Thames, I measure the distance between the two rivers, and marvel that this is the distance of my life. I have ended my days, dear Eloísa, in English lands. And now I feel I have a right to ask: Is it not very appropriate that an English steamer should have been the scene of my conception? The circle closes, the snake bites his own tail, all those clichés.

The preceding I write for the benefit of my more subtle readers, those who appreciate the art of allusion and suggestion. For the cruder among you, I write simply: yes, you have understood. Antonia de Narváez was my mother.

Yes, yes, yes: you have understood.

I, José Altamirano, am a bastard son.

After their encounter on the camp bed of the Isabel , after the faked fever and authentic orgasms, my father and Antonia de Narváez began a very brief correspondence, the most important instances of which I must now present as part of my argument (i.e., reasoning used to convince another) and also my argument (i.e., subject matter of a book). But I must do so by first clarifying certain points. This labor of family archaeology I’ve carried out — I can already hear the objections I’ve heard all my life: mine was not really a family, I have no right to this respectable noun — is based, on occasion, on tangible documents; and that is why, Readers of the Jury, you have and will have in some passages of the narration the uncomfortable responsibilities of a judge.

Journalism is the court of our days. And therefore: I declare that the following documents are perfectly genuine. It’s true that I am Colombian, and that all Colombians are liars, but I must declare the following (and here I place my right hand on the Bible or the book that serves in its place): what I am about to write is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. No one will object if here and there I gloss certain passages, which, out of context, might be obscure. But I have not inserted a single word, nor altered any emphasis, nor changed any meaning. So help me God.

Letter from Miguel Altamirano to Antonia de Narváez, Barranquilla, undated

You will mock me, but I cannot stop thinking of you. And sympathizing with you, for you will have had to return to the one you do not love, while I move inexorably away from the one I adore. 1Are my words excessive, my feelings illegitimate?. . We disembarked yesterday; today we are crossing the sandy plain that separates us from Salgar, where the steamer that will take us to our destination awaits. The sight of the Great Atlantic Ocean, route of my future, supplies much welcome calm. . I am traveling with a likable foreigner, ignorant of our language but very willing to learn it.

He has opened his travel diary and shown me cuttings from the Panama Star that describe, I believe, the advances of the railroad. In reply, I have tried to make him understand that the very same iron track, able to conquer the dense jungle palm by palm, was also the object of my most profound admiration; I do not know, however, if I managed to convey that to him.

Letter from Antonia de Narváez to Miguel Altamirano, place not specified, Christmas Day

Your words are excessive and your feelings illegitimate. Ours, sir, was an encounter the reasons for which I have not yet ascertained and furthermore refuse to explore; I regret nothing, but why pretend interest in what is nothing more than an accident? It does not seem that our destiny is to find each other; I assure you, in any case, that I shall do what is in my power to keep that from occurring. . My life is here, my good sir, and here I must stay, just as I must stay at my husband’s side. I cannot accept your claim, in an act of incredible arrogance, to know where my heart lies. I find myself obliged to remind you that, in spite of the ineffable event, you, Don Miguel, do not know me. Are my words cruel? Take them as you please.