I met Amparo Dávila in Montreal, more than two decades ago, which for me is a lot but for her nothing, because for Amparo the time in love stops, something she boasts of in the titles of her books, Destroyed Time, Concrete music, Petrified trees . In the face of Cleopatra's masterful beauty, Shakespeare exclaims Enobarbus that time has failed to attenuate its charm, nor has custom diminished its infinite variety. Whoever has the honor of knowing it, of conversing with it, of reading it, thinks the same, because their stories and poems do not belong to the time and place where they were published, but rather those high shelves that a secret librarian chooses for the Universal Library.
I say that I met Amparo Dávila in Canada, but it is not true: I met her long before, when she was still living in Buenos Aires, when I discovered her stories in that collection of the Culture Fund that taught us, conceited Argentine teenagers, that in that A place so exotic that it was called Mexico, a unique, timeless, profound, revealing, initiatory literature was being made. For us it was not The Labyrinth of Solitude the book that revealed our own Spanish-speaking identity in the mirror of Mexican identity: it was the books of Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes, Fernando Benítez, Amparo Dávila.
For every adolescent reader, literature is physical. I, fascinated both by the sharp and corrosive writing of the stories of Amparo Dávila, and by the beauty of his eyes in a photo published one Sunday in the literary supplement of La Nación , I translated into English his story "Haute cuisine" and I wondered if Kafka hadn't enviously read it. Years later, I was able to publish that story in Toronto, in an anthology of fantastic literature, and also adapt it for Canadian radio. This is how Amparo Dávilas was in Canada even before his first trip to Montreal.
We haven't seen each other for a long time, but I kept reading and rereading it. Today I have learned of his death, but I cannot believe that this has really happened. Amparo Dávila (I know for sure) is still alive in my library, between Rubén Darío and Francisco Delicado, one dedicating gallant poems to him, the other telling indecent stories. I don't know if the souls in the Hereafter retain their habits, but I bet neither of them will ever make her blush.
Dear Amparo: with these distant words, I want to tell you my love, my admiration, my respect, my friendship.
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