Patrick sturlese
04/02/2021 22:00
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 04/02/2021 22:00
It was night when that call came into my room.
He was in Honduras, in a hotel in San Pedro Sula, and that year, 2019, was the tenth anniversary of that first visit when he had to flee the country in the middle of a coup.
I kept reading
The cost of appearing something other than who we are
Society
It was at night, as I said, my last night before leaving, since the next day I had to take a flight to Panama.
A series of literary presentations was culminating in different parts of the country and yet he had to continue on his way;
Ahead of me, an agenda of presentations awaited me in ten Latin American countries, something that I had already agreed with my publisher.
Let's get back to the call.
The voice I heard through the phone puzzled me, as much as a
déjà vu
, because ten years ago, also at night and in a hotel in Honduras, a call unleashed a kind of catastrophic event that I will hardly forget.
In 2009, I remember, it was after a call that they evacuated me from the room in the middle of the morning, without further explanation, to take me to a house that I never knew too much detail about and where I had to spend the night.
I did not close an eye, I swear, until dawn and they returned to take me to a runway where a plane was waiting
- tiny, its painting somewhat cascaded - that I boarded, yes, how crazy! Tegucigalpa.
I did not understand what was happening too much, but there was a reason for everything.
Different.
Patricio Sturlese in the library where the presentation was held in Lepaera, Honduras, near the border with El Salvador and Guatemala.
A building that is sponsored by Unicef
First, in Honduras violence broke out in the streets and my stay, as you can guess, had become inopportune.
He had come at the wrong time to present a book while the army and police were taking up arms.
Second, the booksellers feared for my safety — a kidnapping, they said — and for that reason they orchestrated the operation between roosters and midnight to get me out of the country.
I ended up in El Salvador, the closest country for the escape, although on the way the plane broke an engine and declared an emergency.
I thought the situation was already really bad until it got worse.
With the engine explosion my window was bathed in oil while the storm, huge, dark, swallowed us in the clouds with the voracity of a monster.
And there I was suddenly, experiencing my own death.
Do you know what it feels like to die in a plane crash?
It's intense, believe me, very intense and overwhelming.
I attest to this.
One is trapped in a fuselage waiting for that awful moment.
And he came there to present a book.
As I looked out the dirty window, I knew that everything from the start of that overnight call had lined up perfectly to claim my life after a sequence of poorly made decisions.
Luckily it wasn't my time;
Death made me feel its presence and then it moved away.
The engine emitted smoke and flames.
We were losing height.
But what happened in that plane is another story.
Let's go back to the year 2019.
Ten years had passed and the voice he heard through the phone did not ask him to pack his luggage and leave the hotel;
it did not warn, either, that he should spend the night in an unknown house.
It gave notice of something also unexpected: the existence of a border library where a handful of children — yes, children — hoped to see me before I left Honduras.
I do not write for children, but the call came from an NGO that promised the transfer to that area: "a whirlwind visit," they said, to be held the next day.
Once the proposal was made, they offered me twenty minutes to think about it, then they hung up.
Emotion.
The municipal government secretary gives Patricio Sturlese the keys to the city.
The writer was so impressed with the meeting that today he keeps it in a privileged space on his desk.
He knows that moments like this are difficult to repeat in more globalized settings.
I sat on the bed and meditated.
He had a dozen countries ahead and he could not, for nothing, take risks such as not arriving at the airport on time and missing a flight.
I walked to the window, I kept thinking.
A bunch of kids?
Hopeful children?
Lightning trip? And with my fingers on the glass I reacted: go to the jungle!
—Nothing more and nothing less— the day my flight left!
From there he could see the entire city and beyond, the dark, eerie horizon
, with a great full moon that peeked out of the clouds at times.
I was silent for a moment looking at the moon.
In my room I had everything: a safe, comfortable place, with a book on the bedside table (“El club Dumas”, by Pérez-Reverte, as I recall) and a satellite TV with 500 channels to pass the time.
Still, as the minutes passed, I became more and more convinced that leaving her would be a complete mess.
Leaving her a decade ago nearly killed me in the jungle.
The phone rang again.
They wanted the answer.
I was blunt in giving it and hung up.
After sleeping for three hours the alarm clock rang, I rolled between the sheets, it was 3.45 in the morning and the temptation to continue sleeping was prodding me sweetly.
I regretted having accepted that proposal.
I went to the shower, turned on the jet, and under the hot water I woke up.
At 4.30 the person they sent for me arrived at the hotel.
A robust man, with a toothpick in his mouth and a thick mustache that closed on his pear shaped horseshoe.
His voice was grave.
"Are you Mr. Patricio?" He asked.
I nodded, and he asked me to follow him.
We walked to a Japanese four wheel drive truck - it looked a bit muddy - I loaded my luggage in the back and we pulled out of the parking lot.
On the way I paid attention to the driver — he did not utter a word — his face looked calmer, I would say relieved, after having left the buildings and the city behind.
An hour and a quarter later a beautiful glow was lit on the horizon of Honduras, it was dawn, when the man stopped the truck at a parador.
"May I buy you a shot, will you accept me?" He asked, to which I agreed and, wow!
moments later a huge breakfast arrived on the table.
A tray with fried plantains, black beans, eggs, pork ribs, sausages and a large cup of black coffee to drink.
For an Argentine palate on an empty stomach, believe me, this is enormous vertigo.
And so, while I ate pork sausage and dipped it down with coffee, I captured the logic of everything that surrounded me;
that was the only strong food on a working day, the only thing the farmer would eat until night fell.
"Working in the coffee plantations has its price: you leave everything behind," explained my mustachioed companion, "you leave your youth, your hands, your nails, your back, your soul."
After a life in the fields, farmers end their days by the side of the road, in small and colorful cemeteries where flowers also wither under the inclement sun.
I kept looking inside the parador and I found an aged painting that hung on the wall: the formation of the 1982 Honduran soccer team. Soccer, there, evoked a kind of happy nostalgia and persisted decades after that World Cup in Spain;
It reminded me of my childhood, the poster of Italy that was in my grandparents' house.
My traveling companion woke me up from that vision: "We must continue on our way," he said
, and paid the bill.
I finished my coffee and went after him.
Once again on the route we went from the asphalt to a gravel road and the mountains, outlined by the rising sun, were seen clearly by the morning brightness.
The jungle became thick, humid.
The truck moved as the driver — for whom I already had some appreciation — told me about everything that caught my attention.
He explained that the howler monkey lived there and also its predator: the jaguar;
that snakes could appear under stones and tarantulas, large as an open hand, were found among the barks.
However, the jungle was dangerous for another reason: the armed conflicts that the region was experiencing.
A hot border, he explained, where gangs and paramilitaries roamed uncontrollably.
We zigzagged the last kilometer and a half through the steep road when I noticed, after four hours of travel, that we were reaching our destination: the town of Lepaera, in the department of Lempira, a few kilometers from Guatemala and El Salvador.
The library building stood with a pretty mural painted in the corner, and its stained glass windows reflected the valley in its splendor.
The news of my arrival had spread the day before and therefore a crowd gathered at the door;
the mayor and the neighbors were preparing for the welcome.
Everything, absolutely everything, from the initial doubts about the call, to the memories of the 2009 Coup d'état —including the plane on fire—,
everything, evaporated as he crossed the threshold of that library.
There they were: about thirty boys sitting on cushions waiting in the living room.
The lightning visit took shape and he lived it to the surface.
I remember a girl with shiny braided hair;
to another with a butterfly in the bun, and among them, a small boy, six or seven years old, with a water hairstyle and very expressive eyes.
Dozens of heads loomed behind them, and a different universe in each of them.
They asked questions that they had rehearsed before, about counts, dukes, and abandoned castles that appear in my books;
They asked about the medieval inquisitors and about Marie Antoinette, on the night of the 400 years of Norway and the Jesuits of the theologate of the Maximum College where I studied.
And they were surprised when I told them about the abandoned house that as a child I used to play hide
and
seek
, and how that abandoned house ended up awakening my passion for writing Gothic novels.
However, in that instant something else happened.
Under their gazes I began to discover the nature of an entire town, one that crossed both children and adults.
Affection, interest in the other, acceptance of differences and all the bridges built for rapprochement were crystallized through simple questions: "Is he leaving us already?" Sighed a child as the director announced my departure.
"Already?
So fast? », The girl with braids demanded, to whom I replied that I should take a flight.
"But will he come back," interjected a young librarian, "do you promise?"
"We could show him the church!" Suggested the well-groomed boy.
"And play hide-and-seek!" Enthused the girl with butterflies in her hair.
It was an infinity of bonds that, like cobwebs, triggered with every wish and trapped me,
preventing
me
from taking a step back in the library.
To a certain extent, she didn't want to, didn't want to, but she had to.
"A fleeting encounter," yes, that was what he had agreed to last night.
The man with the mustaches offered to take me back but first introduced me to his family.
The mayor gave me the keys to the city - which I keep on the wall of my desk with great affection - and yet something strong shook me that day: I am not referring to the recognition or my books, or my visit as a writer.
It was something different.
Something that swept me inside leaving me out in the open.
Of all the visits I made as a writer, both in America and in Europe, I never stopped to evaluate a reality, focusing on children.
Honduras, that country that I only cited because of bad memories, suddenly changed before my eyes.
I lived what I could not have from the hotel: those boys caused, by their gestures, their curious questions, their lively eyes, their dreams ... that a man like me, just passing through, so fleeting and momentary, would change his point of view at all less than about your country completely.
They taught me the secret of their happiness: learn, listen, share.
I got to catch the flight at sunset.
Exhausted.
The round trip took eight hours and he had spent barely thirty minutes in the library.
Even so, when the plane took off to Panama, I carried it with me: the indelible memory of those little border ambassadors.
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Patricio Sturlese
is a writer, lives in Bella Vista, Buenos Aires, where he grew up in a family of Genoese immigrants.
He started working as a gardener, a job he lost in the 2001 crisis, after which he decided to publish his writings.
He studied theology with Jesuits at the Colegio Máximo.
His first novel, "The Inquisitor", published in 30 countries, obtained in 2014 a distinction at the Paris Book Fair.
His other titles are: “The sixth way”, “The threshold of the forest” and “The garden of the deer”.
In 2014, he founded the San Miguel Party Book Fair —Noche de Libros— and promoted the sowing of books in public squares and literary Olympics in schools.
As of 2020 he is director of Culture of the Municipality of San Miguel.
Instagram: @patriciosturlese