Since my last visit to Cartagena, a pair of aerial fig roots, previously just hints, were dangling near the statue of the eighteenth-century actor, Isidoro Máiquez.
“I’ve been away too long,” I thought as I brushed sun-dried leaves from the statue’s base and looked up at his Shakespearean pose.
Máiquez, although famous, is interesting to me as the father-in-law of Manuel Tamayo-y-Baus, author of “Un drama nuevo”, the object of my student’s study. My student, a young woman by the name of Analia is, in turn, the object of my secret desires.
I settled into a café chair facing the plaza, ordered a coffee and flicked open the binder of notes I made on her thesis.
Today, we would spend our time visiting original sources to establish the nature of Máiquez’s influence on the young Tamayo. But first, I would drink in her beauty and brilliance, and ponder on the unbridgeable gap of age and professional duty.
“Professor,” a voice disturbed my reverie, and there she was.
“Ah, Analia, buenos días,” I replied, “¿Cómo has ido?”
I indicated the chair and she sat, her dark eyes gleaming with intelligence.
“What do you think of my new chapter?” She asked.
“It’s exceptionally good,” I replied. “I see you noticed Tamayo’s Macbeth error. To what do you attribute that?”
“I explore that in my next chapter,” she said. I knew she would, nothing would escape her examination. “I think there is deliberation behind it. As if Tamayo is saying to the audience, we do not know Shakespeare as well as we think we do. Yorick foreshadows this, saying the play has flaws, to which Shakespeare replies, ‘The envious will count the flaws; let us only contemplate its beauties’. Here, Tamayo is writing of his own work.”
I smiled; she had it covered. We chatted for an hour before taking leave and strolling through the sunlit streets to the Máiquez repository, where we had secured an invitation to examine his diaries. Late that night, when we had read all there was to read, we headed to the restaurant quarter and ordered Rioja and Pargo Frito. Analia sat close and I could smell her scent through the wafting odours of the open kitchen. She looked at me intently.
“You know,” she said, “the crux is Edmundo’s adulterous affair with Yorick’s wife, Alicia. I am unfamiliar with that kind of passion: an older person loving someone younger.”
“Perhaps,” I said, “it is something experiential.”
“Perhaps,” she replied, “it is something I should undertake if only to gain intimate knowledge…”
I swallowed. I could feel my heart beating and sweat gathering at the nape of my neck.
“You forget,” I said, my decision made, “Alicia is far younger than Yorick. Maybe you need to meet someone nearer your own age.”
A smile played across her lips as she stood and said, “You’re right, Professor. I will continue my research when I return to Madrid. Goodnight.”
Her lips brushed mine and she was gone.