FERNANDO RESTREPO: He had endless situations that worried him very much. Very, very much. Very nervous. Those phobias and fears that he displayed. Like not wanting to stay in a house where anyone had died. There wasn’t the slightest chance it would happen.
GUILLERMO ANGULO: I don’t know if you know what pava is. Pava is very complicated . . . The intellectuals in Venezuela invented the expression: “That’s really pavoso, my friend,” when Venezuelans were oil-rich—naturally, that wealth of the new rich meant they had things in very bad taste. The intellectuals would say that to protect themselves so they wouldn’t have things or do things in bad taste.
Do you know what the height of pava is? Serving tripe in a goblet. So pava has two connotations. It’s what we call lobo here. Colombian lobo, Bogotan lobo is a little classist. To use the word lobo here is very well educated; very, very educated in its origins because there has always been a well-educated bourgeoisie here. It comes from lupanar, the low-rent brothels in Rome. So lobería has to do with the cheap girls offered by the madam. When the upper class talks about these things they refer to them as lovers and there’s nothing bad about it. But saying that a girl is a loba is putting her down, minimizing her. So obviously that loba’s taste is at the level of her education, at the level of her class, that’s what became lobo. In Cuba it’s picúo. In Mexico it’s . . . what is it? I ought to know because my children call me that name. It’s something that sounds as if it’s Indian. Naco. Well, as I was saying, Gabo wrote about pava. So the Venezuelan connotation is that things in bad taste bring bad luck, and that’s pava. Some of his characters have pava. In his daily life, he believes in pava. He fears death more and more and believes in a series of things that one doesn’t believe in. In salt and in every kind of omen. He believes in all that.
FERNANDO RESTREPO: He stayed several times at our farm in Zipaquirá. Our farm is above the salt mines in Zipaquirá. It is relatively large, more than three hundred acres and the house is relatively old, more than eighty or ninety years old; my father-in-law built it. So Gabo was there because he wanted to retrace the steps of his stay there when he was a student.
The first thing he demanded was that we tell him its entire history because he was supremely superstitious. But he considers all those things terrifying, as he told us, and it was incredible how superstitious he was about that kind of thing. “Had people died in that house?” he asked. Because he said that if there had been dead people, he wouldn’t stay. Then I guaranteed that nobody had died in that house. I was absolutely new to that kind of situation. But he took it seriously. I thought it was a joke but he was very serious. If I had told him that someone had died there, he wouldn’t have stayed in the house. That really surprised me, because I thought, at first, that he was making a kind of ironic comment. Not at all. His superstition about that kind of thing was very deep.
MIGUEL FALQUEZ-CERTAIN: Pava leads to pathological extremes. When Alfonso Fuenmayor was dying, he didn’t go to see him, the friend who took bread out of his own mouth to give to him.
QUIQUE SCOPELL: In my opinion, whoever dies is already fucked. That’s a phrase of Álvaro Cepeda’s: “The one who died was fucked.” Why remember anything else? My mother died, and you go to the cemetery . . . What flowers or what shit! If she died, she died. What else are you going to bring?
JUANCHO JINETE: Let’s say, when Álvaro Cepeda died in ’72, Julio Mario Santo Domingo wasn’t in Colombia but he came right away. He arrived one day before the funeral. Everybody came, the president of the republic and all of that. And Gabito said he couldn’t come back because he was in Bolivia (extending his arm, trying to get the waiter): Maestro . . .
QUIQUE SCOPELL: The one who died, what does he care about flowers? Or cemeteries, or funerals, or the Day of the Dead . . . You have to give people whatever it is you want to give them while they’re alive, whatever you want, and not get all upset when they die.
JUANCHO JINETE: Afterward, with what happened with Fuenmayor, who was talking to him a couple of days before he died, he also had an excuse for not coming to the funeral.
GERALD MARTIN: Well, about Alfonso Fuenmayor, what I can tell you is that Gabo made no exceptions. You know what he says: “I don’t bury my friends.” He’s terrified of death and sickness. He didn’t go to any funeral. Not his mother’s or his brother Yiyo’s, the number-two writer in the family. The only important exception, curiously, was his father’s funeral. Strange, don’t you think?
GUILLERMO ANGULO: I have a story for you. There’s a very good film director in Venezuela. Her name is Margot Benacerraf. Do you know who Margot Benacerraf is? Margot Benacerraf was a famous woman. She made only two films. The two films were very successful, and afterward, when you talk to Margot Benacerraf, she tells you: “I was in Antibes with Pablo.” Pablo is Pablo Picasso. “And then Henri took me dancing.” Henri is Cartier-Bresson. “And Pablo painted my thigh.”
Then she decided one day that she wanted to make a movie about Gabo, and Gabo told her: “Look, there’s a short paragraph this small in One Hundred Years, which is the story of Innocent Eréndira. It can be made in La Guajira. It’s very nice.” “Ah yes, let’s do it!” So he wrote the script for her. Then she began to get the money. She went to Europe. She took me to Europe. At a certain moment Gabo and I arrived at one of the most elegant hotels. The hotel where Nixon stayed, which was the Grand Hotel in Rome. And so the reservation for Guillermo Angulo was fine. For Gabriel García Márquez, who wasn’t famous yet, not so famous (One Hundred Years had just come out) they hadn’t made a reservation, even though in Rome, in Italy, they really like him. So they said to him: “No, forgive us, but we’ll give you the Royal Suite. You can sleep there tonight and tomorrow we’ll find a room for you.” They take us to something full of brocade. A marvelous palace, and suddenly Gabo said: “Shit, maestro, Alfonso XIII died here.” “What shall we do?” “Let’s take a walk.” We walked the whole night through Rome. We saw everything. I was dead tired. “No, look, let’s go to the Fontana dell’Esedra.” We went to the Fountain dell’Esedra. “Let’s go to the Fontana di Trevi.” We went to the Fontana di Trevi. Damn!
The next day . . . It was a very elegant hotel where you didn’t have to sign the bill. Gabo, when it was time to pay the bill, since you don’t sign, but they just ask you for your room number, Gabo says he was there, in that room where a king died. The desk clerk says: “Excuse me, señor, but five kings have died in this hotel!”