She was so fertile, so extraordinary, apart from the dramatic situations she controlled with extraordinary dexterity, that Carmen Balcells improvised with such delight that it could even be said that she was the woman who invented writing. He had a winter job on his desk, but when he looked up from the notes written on yellow paper, as soon as his face pointed to a certain spot in his eyes, he improvised and wiped out a summer moment of his soul. hands to greet you as if scolding you: “So what’s wrong with you?”
Then he would laugh, move briskly in his chair, turn around, give an order to everyone in the office, not offer you whiskey, coffee, or anything, and prepare to listen to you, moving his white hands with whose energy at that moment. doing this and thinking a thousand different things at the same time. That’s when the seasons changed on his face, until finally the summer smile prevailed. So, as long as you didn’t cause her or anyone else any trouble, it was actually Carmen Balcells.
I was interviewing him once in that office where it all seemed like part of a secret, and he stepped into the bright realm of directing a Peruvian professor who came for something I didn’t know what he was coming for. The man had already begun to scold her for engaging in such an important conversation, before he had finished sitting down to tell her what had happened to her frightened heart.
We were alone until the man was part of the street again, and then, as if washing his hands at the same time as Pilate, he told the reporter that it was me at that moment: “So what did you come for?” “For an interview.” “Oh, let’s continue then.”
always write
Carmen Balcells’ laugh for whatever reason was like the lush opening of her summers at home. In fact, he always dressed in the summer, in white suits, simple jewelry, the way he told anecdotes like stories, the way he kept something already known as a secret, the way he used common sense in the face of the facts. He thought he was telling her something that no one could know in any language other than his own. When the secret was grown and you were convinced you would take it with you, Carmen Balcells would change the scenario and send you to the kitchen to place any order. When She came back to him, it was possible for him to say to you: “And what did you come to talk to me about?”
He was born on August 9, sometimes I thought he never left the midsummer he came from. If there was any storm around, even if it was December or January, in those days when the august light accompanied him, even if there was any date in the almanacs covered in ice, he could solidify the sun he had come to give it to. anyone.
One of those winters I had a friend who was more than a sister at home; Nélida Piñón, Brazil’s sweetest and smartest writer. He had to return to his home in Rio de Janeiro for Christmas, but the roads were full of bloody snowy winter. She then called this journalist: “Nelida, along with the driver Dionisio, is stranded in Soria, she must immediately go to Barajas, get on her plane and go to Rio to celebrate the holiday.”
On the other end of the phone, far from there, was the journalist listening. “So what can I do Carmen?” He then took the bow out of his head so that the stones would be fruitful, and said to me exactly: “Do me this favor. Call Cadena Ser and tell Nélida to pick up one of the helicopters they sent on the Bike Tour. Get to Soria as soon as possible, save her from the damn winter and take her to Barajas, otherwise she will never reach Rio ».
Naturally, I spent the afternoon searching for that summer bike chopper, which was then wintering, until the moment I picked it up, or rather, it fell into the hands of summer hero Carmen Balcells. But then it occurred to me to look for Nélida, who was actually with Dionisio somewhere in Soria. He greeted me with laughter and parties; When all the uncertainties of the damn snow disappeared, she was happy to be in a safe place where she could leave without delay to board her plane. I then asked Nélida about the nature of the environment in which she was so comfortable. This was, of course, some sort of road brothel; she and the driver who took her on Carmen’s instructions were there until the end of the journey in the Tatar desert, where the journey would begin. Brazil.
He always greeted you as if you were on the verge of summer and winter. She prepared summers for Isabel Allende, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carme Riera, Juan Marsé, Eduardo Mendoza, Gabriel García Márquez… Marsé received the honor of her 60th birthday in January, when it suddenly became the hottest place of summer. so he had the silent summer writer Mario Lacruz sing birthday hymns as time went by… as if a new life was beginning for the author of Últimas tardes con Teresa.
the most effective
When Vargas Llosa was awarded the Swedish Nobel Prize in the winter of 2010, Luis Palomares actually survived the winter, as he died in Barcelona. Luis was her husband, the unforgettable wit of all of Carmen’s summers. He left Stockholm, as he did wherever he thought absence was better than noise, so no one knew he was going where life was calling him, and no one needed to know about his absence. So this summer woman was sitting, making you sit, as if you were living on an ocean liner, asking you to tell me what took you there, and whatever you said to her, she would respond in a different way. different versions of this question: “And you, why? What do you mean by that?”
Of course, no answer was worth it in front of the world’s greatest literary representative, the most influential, the most creative, because, as poet Jorge Enrique Adoum said in a graffiti he found on a wall in Quito, he was him. Who invented the new questions for the answers to take with you? It was unprecedented intelligence, with neither himself nor his agency being addressed, the author entrusting him with the treasury from which he and his agency sought to earn more than reasonable royalties. He once showed me one of the manuscripts in which his author or author awaited the work of the future. He told me, devastated, “And now I must tell you that it is not so now.”
It was always summer at Carmen Balcells’ house, except sometimes. I’ve never seen him rot, as if it was always August in his white heart. She went away with all her secrets and took the writing with her. If the intruder didn’t know how to hide the winter that we all carry inside, I would never have found the letter he prepared for everyone who entered his house.