It wasn’t easy for him to return to normality. The days he had spent with Eulogio had filled him with a sadness he couldn’t shake off. He had looked desperately for some sign of life in his friend’s eyes, but the emptiness behind that gaze seemed boundless.
He hoped that the routine at the bookshop and in the publishing house would save him. But they didn’t. If it had been hard for him to accept that Eulogio was a homosexual, it was harder still for him to accept Piedad’s assertion that he had been in love with him.
He asked himself how it had been possible that he had not noticed, but then told himself that it must have been because he loved him that Eulogio had never allowed himself to inconvenience Fernando. He was his best friend, and he’d never have another man like him.
Sara surprised him by giving him a new book of poems by Marvin.
“It’s very short, only fifteen poems, but we’ll publish it anyway. Poet of Pain. Marvin identified very strongly with that description.”
He didn’t argue. Marvin was the most important author of the Rosent publishing house. And Sara would publish him, even if it was only a single poem. And so he asked her when she would like the book ready by, and she said that September would be a good month to aim for. Sara also surprised him by asking after Catalina.
“She’s well,” he said bluntly.
“Yes, I can see that. Well enough to go and see Marvin give a lecture at Harvard. Admission was free,” she said severely.
So, she knew she was in Boston. Fernando hadn’t told the Wilsons, but he didn’t think that he was being disloyal to them. He thought that Catalina had the right to do what she felt she needed to do, even if that meant upsetting Marvin. He felt no empathy for the American, and he was upset with him in private, given that he was his editor. He lived in an impossible state of tension between the promise he had made to protect Catalina and his duties as an editor. But he hadn’t lied to Sara or Benjamin: if the delicate balancing act broke down, then he would side with Catalina.
“They had to throw her out of the hall. When Marvin finished his talk and the professor who had introduced him asked if there were any questions, she stood up and said, ‘Hello, Marvin, this is Adela. We’ve come to see you. When will you talk to me?’ Luckily the organizer of the day’s events thought that she was a friend of Marvin’s and that she was just there to give him a surprise. He interrupted her and said, ‘Lady, I’m sure that Mr. Brian will be happy to talk to you, but we’re only here to talk about poetry this evening. It’s a great honor of us to have the Poet of Pain with us here at our university. You can talk to him later.’ Catalina tried to speak again, but the professor wouldn’t let her talk. The event didn’t last long. Marvin started to feel unwell, so after only five or six questions he left the room. Catalina tried to follow him, but when she tried to find him he had already disappeared.”
“You know what I think, Sara, we’ve talked about this already. Catalina has a daughter and she needs to stand up for her. The least he can do is listen to her. She won’t give in, she’ll follow him wherever he goes. It’s very easy for him to deal with this situation, which is for him to speak to her and hear what she has to say, but this ridiculous insistence on avoiding her won’t help anyone.”
“I’d say that it’s Catalina who’s ridiculous, constantly making a spectacle of herself.”
“I’ll always support her, you know that,” he said tiredly.
“Yes, I suppose it was you who paid for her flight to Boston. Will you make her come back?”
“I can’t make decisions for her. She needs to know that she can always count on me.”
Sara pursed her lips. She was also upset by the conversation, but Benjamin had insisted she speak with Fernando.
“We have to find a solution to this …”
“The only solution is for me to stop being Marvin’s editor … there’s no point my staying on with him, really. We only speak to each other by letter or via you. I don’t understand why we’re publishing the English version here. It would make more money if we did it in New York.”
“Rosent is a French publishing house and Marvin is our author. His poems will leave this place published in all the languages we decide. There’s no point arguing about that. I thought you liked your job …”
“There is nothing I want more than to be an editor. It’s been my dream since I was a child, to be like my father and do what he did. I know that I owe you everything, Sara, and that I would have fallen off the map without you, but never ask me to give up on Catalina, because I won’t, even if that means I have to leave. I have never lied to you; my primary loyalty has always been to Catalina.”
She subtly changed the conversation. She’d sort things out with her husband. Benjamin had told her that she seemed to have adopted Fernando, and treated him like an unruly son whom she spoiled. Maybe he was right. She remembered something by Pascal: the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.