Do you need me to do some dance passes at some point? Would you like me to sing ‘O Tannenbaum’ or ‘The Road to Bethlehem’? Do you want me to whistle the melody of ‘Entre Dos Aguas’ for a little while, making me play the guitar like Paco de Lucía? Or maybe I should get naked?
I’m not casting for a television talent show or trying to get a part in a movie, but at the door of a bookstore in the center of Aachen, right in front of the cathedral where the man who reinvented Europe sleeps eternal sleep. While Charlemagne takes a nap, I look at the door of the establishment: 15 euros in exchange for seeing a writer from Barcelona read for a while, completely unknown here, who could calmly, if asked, pass the tray of tapas or the mop to compensate for so much attention. On the poster with his photo, it is announced that all seventy tickets sold out two days ago. And the same thing will happen in the events that lie ahead: it’s strange, the fact does not feed his vanity at all (and that can be inflated with more happiness than a muff in a swimming pool, but he knows that they have not come so much for him) , but it triggers in it reflections that have to do with the value given to literature in each country.
The writer, for a moment, lets himself be carried away by an exercise that he has done other times. Like, for example, when you see those Japanese letter tattoos on the biceps of a group of hunks from Vic (it’s just an example, change it if they’re from Vic) who have come to Barcelona for a bachelor party and wonder if, maybe , just maybe, there will be in Kyoto a group of young Tokyoites who have verses and phrases tattooed on their arms such as “Rosa d’abril Morena de la serra” or “Força al canut”. In this case, the writer imagines what would happen if a german author landed in Barcelona and wanted to charge for being seen reading. “That if I want or that if I have&rdquor ;, perhaps the public would respond, because most likely they would not even charge. The German author, or his publisher, would have a hard time attracting a reasonable amount of public that would include that mythical character called Tato who usually appears everywhere (except at book launches).
The Barcelona writer, it’s time to say it because this is not ‘Tristram Shandy’ (where the main character appears when people are already leaving), It’s me. And all this start is the echo of culture shock after spending two weeks traveling to Germany to promote the translation of my novel there. Hallucinating with the interest aroused there not only by reading, which would be more normal, but by seeing a guy read.
Today, without going any further, I return from the frankfurt fair, where Spain has been the guest country this year. Dozens and dozens of Spanish authors have traveled there (the fairs always have something of a Salesian school trip, but also of a barbarian invasion) and I assume that we have all been struck by the same thing, while we talked, signed or smiled a lot at the Franziskaner kiosk or to a local reader.
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In this case, the truly remarkable thing (at least for the novice who signs these lines) has been to see how people go to a reading like someone who goes to a concert, to a puppet show or to a cinema. Sometimes, like it happened to me on Saturday, at the time when the rest of the city gets drunk. How that public laughs moderately, sometimes out loud and sometimes cautiously, and how in the end they buy the book, not as a souvenir, but because they are really going to read it if they haven’t already.
After verifying this, one takes a ‘currywurst’ or a Schnitzel in a tourist bar, with a beer as smooth as the breeze in a magical mountain, and it tastes like glory, like ambrosia, like 25 Michelin stars. And he thinks: “Really, thanks for having us”. Yes, please, call me when you come to Barcelona. Bring us authors from your country, yes. And, for once, she really means it.