defend him, Federico. Let him make his own mistakes so he learns from them. Maybe then, he will finally grow up.”
“You’re right, Carla. He needs to grow up. That’s why he needs you.” As if pre-empting my denial he hurried on, “Yes, I know Rachel would gladly give him her blood. But Becquer needs someone like you who loves him for who he is, not a girl worshiping a god who doesn’t exist. Would you agree to come, if he promises not to charm her?”
Too tired to deny his assumption that it was because I loved Becquer that I didn’t want to be around him, I shook my head.
“No. Even if he doesn’t charm this girl, there will be others. And I’m not you, Federico. I won’t accept that.”
Federico nodded. “I understand,” he said. “Your decision is wise and I’ll abide by it. Loving Becquer was for me an agony I do not wish on anyone.”
“Take my card,” he added, offering me a card he had somehow magicked into his hand, “in case you ever need me.”
“Goodbye, Carla,” he continued after I took it. “I hope you find a new love soon. For only another love displaces — even if it does not erase — the previous one.”
I thanked him for I knew he meant well, even if another love was the last thing I wanted. As for forgetting Becquer I was certain that, in my case, absence would do as well.
Chapter Thirteen: Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
I dreamed of Becquer that night. Dreams of wanting and desire that only increased my determination to stay away from him. If my subconscious was sending a hint, it wasn’t a very subtle one. But my waking self would have none of this nonsense. Determined to forget him, I forced myself to sit and started typing at the computer.
Not for long. The characters usually so eager to tell me their story were nothing but flat cutouts that morning, and the flow of words soon died on my fingertips.
I gave up after a while and googled Becquer’s name: Becquer, Gustavo Adolfo. I had studied his work at school back in Spain, and still knew some of his poems by heart, but if I had learned anything about his life, I had forgotten since. In my search, I found two or three pictures of him in old style suits, but neither these photographs, nor the romantic portrait his brother Valeriano had painted of him (the one printed on the Spanish currency of the twentieth century), bore but a faint resemblance to the man haunting my dreams. As for the biographies I found online, they were sketchy to say the least. They provided the bare facts, but no insight into his mind:
Becquer was born in Sevilla in 1836 and lost his father when he was six. At eleven, after his mother’s death, he and his six brothers went to live with one of their mother’s sisters and several years later, he moved alone with his godmother.
Later he would reunite with one of them, Valeriano, when at fourteen, he joined his uncle Joaquin’s studio as an apprentice. Like their father, like their uncle, Valeriano chose painting as his profession. Becquer, although talented as a painter, loved books more and dreamed of becoming a writer.
His dreams, and almost nothing else, he took with him when, at seventeen, he moved to Madrid with two of his friends. He survived, barely, by writing for newspapers and magazines, and coauthoring plays while working the odd clerical job he was ill-suited to maintain. At twenty-one, he fell sick with the first bout of the mysterious illness (TB was suspected) that would eventually kill him at thirty-four.
With the care of his friends and of his brother Valeriano, who by then had moved to Madrid, he recovered. After a chance encounter, he fell desperately in love with Julia Espin, a beautiful actress who would become his muse even after she rejected him and married another.
After another bout of illness, he married Casta Esteban, his physician’s daughter. A marriage, unexpected that, as Becquer had told me, ended in separation.
I read on, devouring any information I found about him. And so I learned that Becquer died in 1870 — stopped being human, that is. Before dying, he asked his friends to burn his letters, and publish his poems and stories because he was certain, he told them, he would be better known after his death than he had been in life. A presumption that turned out to be true. A presumption he could well make come true if, as an immortal, he supervised the success of his published work.
After a while all the information I found repeated these bare facts. I stopped reading and ordered all the biographies I could find about Becquer, including one written by one of his friends and another by Julia, Valeriano’s daughter, named after Julia Espin, the beautiful girl who broke Becquer’s heart and inspired his achingly beautiful poems of unrequited love.
I wrote nothing that first morning, which bothered me. My first book, a medieval fantasy — not surprising, considering I taught Medieval History at a private college — had taken me two years to write. When I finished my second book two years after that and realized that the end was not an ending but the beginning of a new story, I’d decided to take a sabbatical to finish my third book, for I was beyond tired of writing in stolen moments. My sabbatical had started in July; we were in November now. I had no time to waste.
What was even more frustrating was that, although my dream of getting successfully published was within my reach now that Becquer was my agent, knowing he was immortal had stolen all pleasure from my accomplishment. Not to mention the fact that my infatuation with him was making it impossible for me to concentrate on my writing.
Still, I persevered. But after two days of wasting time rereading Becquer’s
I was aware that publishers take months to read a manuscript, yet knowing Becquer’s powers of persuasion, I was not surprised when a week after our meeting in Cafe Vienna, he contacted me by e-mail.
Two of the editors who had read my novel were interested, he explained. One of them was, as I’d expected, Richard Malick, the editor impersonating Lord Byron I had met at Becquer’s party. Becquer attached the two proposals and discussed the pros and cons of the two offers and the reasons he recommended I sign with Richard.
Finding no fault with his decision, I wrote him back agreeing to his suggestion.
His next e-mail was short and to the point.
Although it was my understanding that most contracts are signed by mail, his tone, courteous and professional, gave me no reason to refuse his request. But my trust of his word was not the only reason I accepted. The truth was I wanted to see him.
His hold on me had increased, not decreased, as the week passed. Several times, I found myself driving toward his house while running an errand, or after dropping Madison at school or at one of her friend’s house. I had always stopped in time and turned around. I couldn’t start to imagine my embarrassment had I made it close enough for Becquer to sense me and my pathetic crush. For crush was the only word to describe this yearning for a person I had met only four times. And having a crush at my age was ridiculous. Crushes were for teenagers, not for mothers of teens.
Madison might be only fifteen, but she, certainly, had more sense than I did.
“I don’t fall for guys who have no interest in me,” she had told me some weeks earlier. “What would be the point?”
“There is no point,” I’d told her. “But you don’t choose whom you love.”
“I do,” Madison said, so stubbornly certain that I gave up trying to explain.
But I knew by experience that reason had nothing to do with love. I had fallen for Becquer against all
