Aunque nunca vivió en Alejandría, leyó todos los libros. De joven, conoció bastante del Levante como para creer que sabía qué esperar, y se inventó el resto a partir de Cavafis, Forster, Durrell y Pynchon. Sentado en la terraza de un café en el puerto de Paros, se puso a conversar con un especialista en acontecimientos inesperados y juntos fabularon una entrega de mercadería ilícita del Líbano al Pireo, con un depósito en Chipre. Su interlocutor, un ruso que en otros tiempos había capitaneado un trasatlántico, ordenó champán. Empezaba a oscurecer. ¿Fue allí, o en otra parte, donde decidió que nunca iba a ser más feliz que en un puerto levantino, a la caída del sol? Más adelante, cuando fue la figura internacional de la intriga a la que estaba destinado a convertirse, finalmente visitó la ciudad sobre la que había fantaseado años atrás. Su decepción fue intensa y a la vez contradictoria. Atribulado por pensamientos suicidas, experimentó una epifanía: no era Alejandría lo que él buscaba, sino otra ciudad, un lugar que tendría que inventar. Fue casi un alivio.
(inédito)
Richard Gwyn (Pontypool, Gales, Reino Unido, 1956)
Versión de Jorge Fondebrider
Cities unvisited
Although he never lived in Alexandria, he had read all the books. As a young man, he visited enough of the Levant to think he knew what to expect, and concocted the rest from Cavafy, Forster, Durrell and Pynchon. Sitting outside a café in the port of Paros he fell into conversation with a specialist in unforeseen events and together they dreamed up a delivery of illicit merchandise from Lebanon to Piraeus, with a storage facility on Cyprus. His interlocutor, a Russian who in former times had skippered a cruise liner, ordered champagne. It started to grow dark. Was it there, or somewhere else, that he decided he was never happier than in a Levantine port, as the sun goes down? Later, when he was the international figure of intrigue he was destined to become, he finally visited the city he had fantasized about so many years before. His disappointment was both intense and contradictory. Suffering suicidal thoughts, he experienced an epiphany: it was not Alexandria he sought but another city, a place that he would have to invent. This almost came as a relief.
(inédito)
Richard Gwyn (Pontypool, Gales, Reino Unido, 1956)
Versión de Jorge Fondebrider
Cities unvisited
Although he never lived in Alexandria, he had read all the books. As a young man, he visited enough of the Levant to think he knew what to expect, and concocted the rest from Cavafy, Forster, Durrell and Pynchon. Sitting outside a café in the port of Paros he fell into conversation with a specialist in unforeseen events and together they dreamed up a delivery of illicit merchandise from Lebanon to Piraeus, with a storage facility on Cyprus. His interlocutor, a Russian who in former times had skippered a cruise liner, ordered champagne. It started to grow dark. Was it there, or somewhere else, that he decided he was never happier than in a Levantine port, as the sun goes down? Later, when he was the international figure of intrigue he was destined to become, he finally visited the city he had fantasized about so many years before. His disappointment was both intense and contradictory. Suffering suicidal thoughts, he experienced an epiphany: it was not Alexandria he sought but another city, a place that he would have to invent. This almost came as a relief.
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