“My hands are of your colour; but I shame

To wear a heart so white”          
– Macbeth, William Shakespeare

From  A Heart So White by Javier Marias

Javier Marias
20 September 1951-11 September 2022
Spanish author, translator, columnist

I have discovered the fiction of Javier Marias back in August 1997 while travelling to Edinburgh for the Summer Festival.

In my backpack I had his book A Heart So White translated into Greek.

I got fascinated by Javier Marias’ obsession with secrets, his pedantic description of gestures – often left unfinished – and by the long sentences, with many twists and parenthetical phrases that ask for special attention and decoding.

Sentences-riddles like the plots and human stories he examines with the obsession and intensity of a detective-philosopher.

His main characters are sort of captives in a web of destiny or haunted by a dark past. If they manage to remember, if they trace back the deep-seated secrets and guilts, resonating a Greek tragedy, the characters may find redemption.

Next stop down memory lane, I am dressed in a colourful skirt and I walk in Seville in May 2011 visiting Feria del Libro.
I remember the afternoon pleasantly fresh after a warm and humid day, and the location of Feria a vibrant hub.

In my bag I am carrying the same book. This time in the hotel is left not a backpack, but a suitcase with floral dresses, hats and swimming suits for the subterratean baths and swimming pools of Seville I have read about.

I am studying Spanish for the last months, but my mind switches to English as I stand in front of Javier Marias, this giant of literature. Since 1997 I have been reading all his books in English translation.

You think you know the writer intimately if you have read his books and followed few of his interviews. You may have taken his thoughts as confessions addressed to you only. This is part of the magic of reading fiction, novels in particular, which seem to have an autobiographical twist, or so you think.
However, a favourite writer is another unknown person. If you happen to come across him or her in your lifetime you have to remember this, to avoid any inconvenience.

At that precise moment Javier Marias is about to enter a lecture room packed with people. He must have ‘translated’ my gestures before my words, same as he does in his so visual long descriptions, because he took my book, signed and handed it back to me. He does not smile.

Later, this widely traveled book lies on the table next to a plate of tapas. I am looking at the signature in the first page.
It feels like magic that this book has flied me from Athens, Greece to Edinburg, Scotland to the centre of Seville, Spain. A trip that extends from 1997 to 2011.

Magic happens when you take the phrase: ‘with a book you travel’  literally!

Lisa Samloglou 2019© All rights reserved