“In the middle of life’s path…”, Dante Alighieri.
It was one morning in March 1996 when I received his phone call and we had the conversation that changed my life. So I was right in the middle of the path of life that I have traveled so far. I was still a young writer of thirty-five years old, with some sorrows and no glory who, shortly before, had made a risky bet: I had left my job as editor-in-chief of a cultural magazine and had become, legally and officially, the first independent Cuban writer. When I look back at that moment, it still seems incredible to me that I would have chosen to make such a decision: we were living in a country in deep economic crisis as it was at that time (the endless Cuban crisis), we barely had the money to continue subsisting poorly and, as a writer, not even the shadow of an editor on the horizon. But I just wanted to write and I had thrown myself into the void.
But now I believe that, as Marcus Aurelius seems to have said (according to the Glass brothers in Salinger’s works) that “it was waiting to happen.” And the first thing that happened was that, three months after the stipulated date had expired, I had received the news that my novel Masks had, granted in January 1996, thirteen days after I became a freelance writer. Then something changed: suddenly I had an international award that I was no longer expecting and I even had money that saved me from poverty, which was already a lot to ask for. But nothing more. I could say, as a Cuban at the end of the 20th century, that from the torrid hell of uncertainty I had gone to the purgatory of a certain conviction that perhaps there would be some way out… And then the phone rang that opened the doors to what would be my paradise as a writer.
Not even in my wildest dreams could I have suspected that something like this could happen to me, and that morning in March 1996 it was happening to me: on the other end of the line, , the founder and director of the Tusquets publishing house, told me that she had read my winning novel at Café Gijón and that she intended to publish it.
I think that a call like that would have shaken any writer of the language to the core. But, for that young Cuban writer that I was, with no other means of living, no job and no editor, that unexpected proposal, arriving from the most coveted place – that now legendary Tusquets publishing house, that of Milan Kundera, John Irving, Marguerite Duras, the erotic novels from the La Sonrisa Vertical collection -, surpassed everything I could have dreamed of. My life, in the space of about five minutes of telephone conversation, took a somersault towards what any author could hope for and I achieved it in a magical, revealing and transcendent moment.
Three months later, arriving in Spain to receive my Café Gijón Award – it was just a portentous check, although without ceremony and not even a diploma to file -, my wife Lucía and I moved to Barcelona and entered for the first time into the domain of the wonderful kingdom of Beatriz de Moura, the narrow and crowded offices on Iradier Street. There, after a first conversation with Antonio López Lamadrid, commercial director of the house – a man who would also be one of the most important people in my life, perhaps the one who had the most confidence in what I could achieve with my work – I went to the small glass enclosure, located in the patio or garden of the property, the place where the character of a leading publishing house in the Spanish-speaking literary universe was decided, the great little throne from which Beatriz de Moura worked her miracles.
The shock caused to me by that first meeting with that easygoing woman, a smoker, well-combed and so sure of herself, was such that I have forgotten what we talked about, although I suppose it was: and its publication, which would occur in January of the following year, 1997, in the magnificent collection Andanzas. What I have never been able to forget is that, upon leaving the premises on Iradier Street, already on the sidewalk where we were waiting for the taxi that would take us back to the hotel, my wife, Lucía, who had attended the conversations with Tony López and Beatriz with me, told me another of the great truths of my life, in a certain sense, I believe, the greatest of all the truths related to what I wanted to be: “Well, now you are a writer.” And in fact I started to be.
My relationship with him has now spanned thirty years and twenty published titles. It has allowed me to have editions in many different languages, obtain awards, and participate in events in many places. And everything has happened thanks to Beatriz de Moura finding something in my literature that she thought was worth publishing and supporting. And my gratitude is perhaps greater than that of the rest of the Hispanic American colleagues who have had the literary privilege of being part of the editorial catalog that Beatriz de Moura, year after year, created and consolidated, giving it visibility and what would become the support of prestige: because unlike those colleagues (who surely feel enormous gratitude towards Beatriz), my work as a writer has had since then and until today – in the hands of the heirs of the school of Beatriz and Tony – the support of a publisher more than of a country in which, for several years, my books have not been published. That is why I say that I am a Cuban writer, but that, thanks to Beatriz de Moura, I am also a writer from Tusquets.
I must warn, as it is fair, that the editorial paradise to which Beatriz de Moura’s sensitivity and sharp vision took me was not always paradisiacal. Dealing with that editor who always thought of herself as an editor had some complicated frictions, as she could be as harsh as she was affectionate. However, working with her and her readings was always a humbling exercise because, on principle, Beatriz intended that each book by her authors be the best one had the ability to write. And his standards were always high.
Beatriz de Moura’s legacy was so powerful that, since she decided to move away from editorial work, her spirit has continued to guide the profile of the creature she engendered in the midst of Franco’s regime and made it grow throughout her years at the head of Tusquets, that house that became mine and that I have had the enormous privilege of inhabiting, thanks to her and what, apparently, she saw in my work. But—and here is the key to everything—: not in the work he had done, but in the work he could do. That capacity for anticipation that is the gift of great editors.
And now Beatriz de Moura has died. And with it an era closes. With his departure a throne is emptied. And, in its transit, I trust that it will pass by Virgil’s side and continue, continue, until it meets its celestial namesake who, with its divine light, will illuminate the path of paradise towards heaven where it should be as it deserves, as the great editor that it was and will be.
Thank you, Beatriz.
