After writing Magokoro, Flavia Company decided she was closing a long chapter of her literary career. What she would write next would be completely different. The new writing path would run in parallel with a long adventure: setting out on a solo round-the-world journey.
At Zenda we present a chapter from The Key (Navona), by Flavia Company.
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THE BOOK
The land trip from Argentina to the border of Ecuador with Colombia had been planned for a long time. The idea was for it to last four or five months, moving from south to north by bus, along the coast whenever possible. It would begin in the early days of June, as soon as the private lessons and those I gave at the Ateneu de Barcelona’s Writing School were finished.
At the end of May, with everything ready, there was one last session at home with a group of six students. It was a Wednesday. That same morning, I had shared on social media the news of my departure and warned that I would be offline for a few months.
At five in the afternoon, my students rang the doorbell —they always waited to be gathered at the door so they wouldn’t have to call multiple times and so they could all go up at once—. Soon we were seated in the living room, with a very high ceiling, a Masonry-style wooden beam, and a floor of mosaic hydraulic tiles. I loved that house. Two settled on the sofa, covered with wine-colored fabric, and the other four on chairs, antique pieces of worn golden velvet. I faced them, in a dark wooden armchair.
Then Lisa, before we began the class, said: “I’ve brought you a surprise.” She opened her bag and drew out a copy of my novel Circles in Alum, published twenty-three years earlier. Before handing it to me, she told the story of how it had come into her hands.
Apparently the husband, a famous art director whose name we will not reveal because, next, he could be accused of theft, was filming a television advertisement in Amsterdam. The set where the action took place was the décor of the living room of a slightly cultured or educated family, or so one might suppose, because there were shelves filled with countless books. “And among so many volumes, my husband, who never pays attention to those minutiae because that’s what the operatives are for, spotted the volume and exclaimed, ‘Hey, what a coincidence, that book belongs to my wife’s professor,’ and kept it to bring it to me, and here it is. I thought you’d find the anecdote amusing. I haven’t even opened it yet,” concluded Lisa and handed it to me.
I received it gratefully and took a moment to leaf through it. I wanted to see if there was, perhaps, a marginal note, a remark, a slip of paper between the pages, any detail that might give me clues about who it had belonged to. I opened it from the back cover and moved forward, not finding anything that caught my attention. But when I reached the first leaf, the title page, the entire world paused its course for an instant and the clouds kept their shape and the planes did not go forward or backward, and all beings fell silent and no fruit fell from its tree. And it was in that almost imperceptible moment that a channel between life and death opened — my impression flashed across my expression and Pilar had time to pull out her phone and take a photo — so that a channel could open and it would be possible for a message to cross the tunnel or bridge that links or separates the two worlds. The copy I held in my hands, the one my student had received in Barcelona from her husband, who had found and stolen it in Amsterdam to bring it to his wife, and whose wife had decided to show it to me as a curiosity on the very last day of class before my trip, that copy of Circles in Alum was the one I myself had given and inscribed in handwriting more than two decades earlier to my dearest grandmother, who had found no other way to wish me a good journey south — and “South” happened to be the name of the Montesinos editorial’s collection in which the novel had appeared.
And the dedication said, and still says:
My dear grandma, I love you very much and I admire you with all my strength, because you are an incredible and wonderful woman. (They say I take after you). And moreover, you are the best “manager” in the world and, if not, let them see the salary I pay you: All the love of your granddaughter,
Flavia
Barcelona, February 10, 1993
For several days I wondered whether I should read the book to understand my grandmother’s message. I didn’t. I thought life would offer me the key to open that door.
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Author: Flavia Company. Title: The Key. Publisher: Navona. Sales: All Your Books.