Reseña: Solar, de Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan, Solar (Londres: Vintage Books, 2011). 283 páginas.

¿Es más probable que un científico, por el carácter de su profesión y la tenacidad con que suelen trabajar, sea una buena persona que otro que se dedique a otra cosa? ¿Son buenas personas los médicos, cuya ocupación es salvar vidas? Evidentemente, no. De hecho, apostaría cualquier cosa a que, si se realizase un estudio cuantitativo fiable, en la variada gama de profesiones debe haber de todo: buenas y malas personas, mezquindad y bondad, avaricia y generosidad a partes iguales.

Del inglés Ian McEwan, el lector siempre puede esperar literatura de una alta calidad, capaz de capturar la atención del lector más exigente y contar una historia con indudable maestría. Novelas como Atonement, On Chesil Beach, o la más antigua The Cement Garden  o relatos como los de First Love, Last Rites o de Between the Sheets son prueba irrefutable de que McEwan es un excelente narrador. Pero Solar, en mi opinión, no está a la altura de otras obras de McEwan. Le falta lo que en inglés se suele llamar ‘punch’, esa especie de empuje o fuerza tan presente en otras de sus obras, y que, como ocurrió con Saturday, tampoco abunda en esta novela.

En Solar, McEwan opta por la sátira para desmenuzar (más bien hacer trizas) a un personaje, Michael Beard, un científico inglés que se hizo acreedor al Premio Nobel. Cuando conocemos a Beard en la primera parte de la novela, en el año 2000, éste se dispone a viajar a las islas Spitsbergen, en el Círculo Polar Ártico. Con sobrepeso, cincuenta y pico años, con propensión a la comilona y el abuso del alcohol, Beard es el blanco perfecto de la ironía y la burla. Sus vivencias en un entorno de veinte grados negativos de la primera parte de la novela le sirven a McEwan para realizar una portentosa caricatura, que se va ampliando en las dos partes siguientes, fechadas en 2005 y 2009.

La trama de Solar gira en torno al proyecto que Beard promueve tras aprovecharse de los bocetos y notas de uno de los empleados del Centro de investigación de energías renovables que él dirige. Curiosamente, al regreso del Ártico sorprende al joven investigador, Tom Aldous, en su casa y vistiendo su albornoz de baño; descubre por tanto que Aldous se ha convertido en (el segundo) amante de su quinta esposa, Patrice. En una rocambolesca historia que incluye un guiño cómico autorreferencial que implica la piel de un oso polar, Beard se libra de Aldous y del albañil que también perseguía a Patrice.

Beard es retratado sin compasión alguna: es un genio venido a menos, un desastre andante, un bebedor avaricioso, un tipo perezoso, obeso, egoísta y guloso, y muy conservador en su relación con los demás y en su visión del sexo opuesto. Envanecido por haber recibido un Premio de la Academia Sueca, Beard ha hecho suyo un sentido del privilegio que se extiende con toda naturalidad a las prácticas corruptas, y en un sector, el de la energía limpia y renovable, que en años recientes ha visto expandirse su importancia y facturación de manera exponencial. Adúltero irreprimible, termina por aceptar que una de sus amantes tenga un hijo suyo, sin que eso vaya a cambiarle la vida ni un ápice. Su arrogancia no conoce límites.

No creo que sea la aversión que provoca el personaje de Beard lo que haga de Solar una novela imperfecta. Dado que Beard se ve a sí mismo como salvador de la especie humana, la fuerza de la ironía estriba en que este soberbio mamarracho de científico no sabría salvarse a sí mismo de nada. La cuestión es que el humor negro de McEwan (que tan buenos resultados daba en The Cement Garden) no termina de acoplarse a la temática de Solar.

En la tercera parte del libro, Beard acude a un remoto poblado de Nuevo México, donde en los últimos años ha estado desarrollando el proyecto de producción de energía basado en la imitación de la fotosíntesis (algo que por ahora no es posible: una quimera). Es aquí donde los acontecimientos se desencadenan y todos los engaños, y todos los engañados, se juntan para darle el golpe definitivo a Beard. El final es un poco flojo a mi parecer: la novela se sale por la tangente tras haber perdido fuelle desde el comienzo de la tercera parte.

Con todo, como es habitual en McEwan, Solar tiene un alto nivel y satisfará al lector que busque una historia bien narrada con dosis de humor y alguna que otra escena ridícula.

Historical injustices: El cavall verd by Joaquín Borrell

Joaquín Borrell, El cavall verd (Picanya: Edicions del Bullent, 2004). 2a. edición. 159 páginas.

While I lived in Sydney, it was not infrequent for me to be talked to by people of Middle-Eastern background. I always had to explain to them that I came from Spain, and that I did not understand their language. Anyone who sees photographs of my father as a young man would notice how ‘North African’ he looks. Like father, like son.

The last time I saw my father’s younger brother was in late 2001, shortly before died of leukaemia and after having suffered a third heart attack. He was an interesting character; his life was a little colourful, so to speak. I remember that day we discussed the political situation in Spain; his pet hate subject was immigration. That afternoon he embarked on a long tirade against immigrants to Spain, and cursed the “Africans, the Moors, that sort of scum”. The crisis had not hit Spain. That came a few years later.

I was of course appalled by his racism and prejudice, which are of course born out of ignorance and poor education. Being a migrant myself, I rapidly pointed out that my grandmother’s family name, that is, his mother’s name is Alamar, and that more than likely the surname was of Moorish extraction: Al-Amar. My family is therefore partly of North African background. He would have none of it, though. He was wilfully blind to the evidence. So I subtly changed the subject and talked about football… thus moving the ship into calmer waters.

The concept of ethnic cleansing is not new to our time. In Spain, the expulsion of the Jews from the Kingdom of Castile in 1492 was accompanied by the forceful conversion of Mudéjars (Spanish Muslims) to the Christian faith. A large Muslim population remained in the area of Valencia, then part of the Kingdom of Aragón, although they were forced to convert by 1526 or leave the country. They were known as moriscos. Yet in 1609 further pressure from Castile translated into a decree whereby the moriscos were forced to leave their land: all their properties were confiscated. It is thought that about 300,000 people were forcefully removed from their land.

Joaquín Borrell’s El cavall verd is a short romance set in 1609. It tells the doomed love story of Martí Villalta and a young morisca called Ezme in the context of the dramatic and woeful events that took place during and after the expulsion ban was enacted. Martí has returned from America, where he has served as a soldier.

When he sees Ezme for the first time, she is being chastised on the pillory and is accused of heresy and witchcraft. The moriscos in the almost inaccessible valleys of the Marina region are in overt defiance and have kept their customs and traditions.

After the expulsion decree is made public, more moriscos flee to these valleys. The army is sent to overpower them; many are slaughtered while attempting to fight a professional army without any proper weapons. The few that survive take refuge in the steep hills, where they remain under siege and weakened by hunger and thirst until they surrender to the Christian troops.

Borrell’s narrative does not dwell upon sentimentalism; his description of the battles does not spare any gory details. He attempts to make the reader reflect on the injustice of the expulsion by adopting Martí’s point of view, and he succeeds. Ultimately, the themes are the absurdity and the irrationality of all wars. Yet no war is really about religion; they are usually related to money and power. The exodus of the moriscos, imposed by the king and the Castilian nobility under the pretence of defending their “true” faith, impoverished Valencia badly. In some remote rural areas, close to 100% of the population were expelled. Their houses were looted, their cattle stolen. The land was left unattended and crops were lost.

It is worthwhile mentioning what inspired Borrell to write this story. During a trip to the northern Algerian city of Oran, Borrell was understandably shocked when he heard the names of Valencian villages mentioned in some sort of mournful lullaby an old Berber lady was singing to her granddaughter.

Most of the moriscos fled to northern Africa. Despite my late uncle’s reluctance to admit it, it would seem that some of them (some of us) were able to stay in Valencia, and at least one eventually migrated to Australia.

I leave you my English version of Borrell’s ‘Introduction’ to El cavall verd.

Introduction

This story began on a hot summer afternoon in 1981, while I was aimlessly wandering in the Oran Kasbah. In a whitewashed patio decorated with geraniums, a wrinkly old woman was humming a song to her granddaughter, whom she was holding in her arms. It was a pleasant tune, in the psalmodic style of Moorish music, and I found it so appealing I stayed still to listen. Suddenly three emphatic syllables stuck out in the smoothness of the language: Petracos, a clearly intelligible word amid the undecipherable lyrics of the song.

I was intrigued by the phonetic coincidence with the plain of the same name located in the heartland of the Marina region. After some brief haggling, the woman agreed to repeat the lyrics of the song before a friend of mine, an interpreter. This was the translation:

I was born in a land of sunshine by a beautiful sea,
delightful amongst mountains of rugged solitude,
of shining joyful greens, laden with cherries.
May Allah ever defend Laguar, my valley!
The bones of my people rest there, white ash
blended in crags for evermore.
Petracos, oh fields of tears, you still carry in your oleander blooms
the gleaming gushes of so much spilled blood;
with fresh and crimson sap you nourish in your core
dormant farm works that will never die.
Laguar, a word of sweetness, pressed upon our lips,
like a living torch raised against the sea,
glowing in the memory of those who found their death
waiting for a dreamlike horse, a green horse, that never came.

The old lady did not know the meaning of the verses. She had learned them from her parents, and they learned from theirs, and so on until we would reach the first poet who had fled the Valencian lands… My interpreter did not attach much importance to a very minor sample of the musical wealth of those parts, and he very soon forgot about it. I did not, because that song, which had emerged from such an unsuspected place, reminded us Valencians of the way we have forgotten one of our most important historical events: the tragic end of the moriscos in the Marina.