“My name’s Esteban Werfell, actually,” I said. Still laughing, the old man invited me in.
“Werfell! Mein Kamerad!” he cried, embracing me. Then he introduced himself and it was my turn to be wide-eyed.
The old man was Theodor Steiner, my father’s old friend, his comrade from the Eichendorff Club.
“I thought you’d never come!” he exclaimed as we climbed the stairs.
When we went into the library, Herr Steiner asked me to sit down and he began searching the bookshelves for something.
“Here it is!” he said, picking up a copy of Joseph Eichendorff’s Gedichte. A cream-colored envelope protruded from between the pages.
“Señor Werfell, the Maria Vockel you thought you knew was only an invention of your father’s. There was an actress by that name in the Hamburg opera, of course, but she never lived in this house.”
Herr Steiner looked at me very gravely.
“May I read my father’s letter?” I said.
“Please do. It’s been waiting here for you for thirty years.” He sighed, then disappeared down the corridor.
His father’s letter still lay between the pages of the Eichendorff book and both now lay on the table. Esteban Werfell opened the cream-colored envelope and began to transcribe the text that would complete his twelfth notebook.
My dear son,
Forgive me for having deceived you. I am nearly at the end of my life but I still don’t know if what I did on that Sunday was right or not. I feel afraid. Sometimes I think I’m just a foolish old man.
I’d like to call you to my side and explain myself to you frankly, without having to resort to this letter, but I dare not. If someday you go in search of Maria Vockel, Theodor will hand you this letter and you will know the truth. lf not, it will remain a secret. Whatever happens, I ask your forgiveness once more, a thousand times more.
In fact, everything happened purely by chance, with no premeditation on my part at all. When you told me what you had seen and heard when you fainted, I realized at once that the whole scene was made up of snippets of conversations you’d had with me. 2 Johamesholfstrasse, for example, was the address of the one friend who still wrote to me with news of my country; Maria Vockel, on the other hand, was the name of one of my favorite opera singers.
Then I had an idea. It suddenly occurred to me that I could become Maria Vockel and influence your life that way. You may not remember now, Esteban, but at the time you had grown away from me and your view of life had become more like that of the people of Obaba than mine. In my eyes, as you well know, that was the end, the very worst thing that could happen. I didn’t want you to become one of them and I thought it my duty to prevent that from happening.
I wrote to Theodor asking for his help and we came to an arrangement. The system was very simple. I would write the letters here at home and send them to my friend Theodor. He then had them copied out by a girl the same age as you — everything had to look as authentic as possible — and sent them back to Obaba.
The game lasted until I saw that you were safe, until you went off to the university. Once you’d tasted university life, you would never choose to return to live among these mountains again. Still less after the education I had given you through the letters. I had made you learn my language, I had made you read …
The letter continued, but the words his father used to conclude his explanation were so personal, so full of love, he felt unable to transcribe them.
“Here ends this memoir,” he wrote. Then he switched off the light and was left in the dark, feeling happy and at peace.
An exposition of Canon Lizardi’s letter
THE LETTER IN QUESTION covers eleven sheets of quarto paper, parts of which have been rendered illegible by the many years it lay forgotten in a damp cellar, for it was never sent. The first sheet, the one in direct contact with the floor, is in a particularly parlous state and so badly stained that one can scarcely make out the canon’s opening words at all. The rest, with the exception of one or two lines on the upper part of each sheet, is in an excellent state of preservation.
Although undated, we can deduce that the letter was written in 1903 since, in the closing words that immediately precede the signature, the author states that he has been in Obaba for three years and, at least according to the cleric who now holds the post, everything seems to indicate that Canon Lizardi took over the rectorship of the place around the turn of the century.
He was clearly a cultivated man, judging by the elegant, baroque calligraphy and the periphrastic style laden with similes and citations he uses to broach the delicate matter that first caused him to take up his pen. The most likely hypothesis is that he was a Jesuit who, having left his order, opted for ordinary parish work.
As regards the addressee, he was doubtless an old friend or acquaintance, even though, as mentioned earlier, the poor condition of the first page does not permit us to ascertain that person’s name and circumstances. Nonetheless, we feel justified in assuming that he was a person of considerable ecclesiastical authority, capable of acting as guide or even teacher in the very difficult situation prevailing in Obaba at the time, if one is to believe the events described in the letter. One should not forget either that Lizardi is writing to him in a spirit of confession and his tone throughout is that of a frightened man in need of the somewhat sad consolation of a superior.
On the first page, according to the little that one can read at the bottom, Lizardi writes of the “grief” paralyzing him at that moment and describes himself as feeling “unfitted to the test.” Those few scant words allow us to place in context the story that the canon unfolds over the subsequent ten pages and prevent us from being misled by the circuitous, circumlocutory style. Let us look now at the form the test referred to at the very start of the letter might have taken. This is what Lizardi writes on the second page, which I transcribe word for word:
… but first, dear friend, allow me to speak briefly of the stars, for it is in astronomy books that one finds the best descriptions of this daily wandering, this mysterious process of living, which no metaphor can adequately encompass. According to the followers of Laplace our universe was born out of the destruction of a vast ball or nucleus drifting through space, drifting alone, moreover, with only the Creator for company, the Creator who made everything and is in the origin of all things; and out of that destruction, they say, came stars, planets, and asteroids, all fragments of that one lump of matter, all expelled from their first home and doomed ever after to distance and separation.
Those, like myself, who are sufficiently advanced in years to be able to discern that dark frontier of which Solinus speaks, feel cast down by the description science so coldly sets before us. For, looking back, we cannot see the world that once enwrapped us like a cloak about a newborn babe. That world is no longer with us and because of that we are bereft of all the beloved people who helped us take our first steps. At least I am. My mother died fifteen years ago and two years ago the sister who shared my house with me died too. And of my only brother, who left to travel overseas while still only an adolescent, I know nothing. And you, dear friend, you yourself are far away; at a time when I need you so, you too are far away.
This paragraph is followed by a few barely legible lines that, as far as I can make out, refer to the psalm in which the Hebrews in exile from Zion bemoan their fate. Then, on the third page, the canon concludes his long introduction and embarks on the central theme of his letter: