Sometimes the lack of progress is discouraging, but the process of rummaging in archives is always fun.
Yesterday I experimented with using the bike for transportation all day instead of the metro. On balance (when I don't get lost), it's faster point to point on the downhills, about the same on flat ground, and slower on uphills. So, overall, about the same speed. And the uphills are pretty brutal. I may be forced to return to the metro on days when I move around a lot. (Unfortunately, yoga sits on very high ground, so getting there is a challenge.)
In any case, yesterday I headed from the university over the BNE by bike (essentially a west to east trajectory). I arrived, and searched for parking where I could have sworn I had seen bike racks. No bike racks. I circled the large gracious sweep in front of the big library steps. No bike racks. Finally, desperate and not completely happy about the option, I prepared to lock my bike to a metal U that marked the spot of a garbage can in front of a car parking space. I was just maneuvering the lock into position when an older lady, somewhat formally dressed, hailed me and said "¿Te han dicho que puedes aparcar allí?" I was prepared to be huffy and annoyed, but I started out by being humble, and said that there was no other available place. ("Es que no hay otro sitio.") "Sí, que lo hay," she said, to my utter surprise. "Está allí a la izquierda, un poco escondida." At first I thought she was just trying to be rid of me, but then we walked around the one side of the building I had not explored because I hadn't thought it was worthwhile, and there indeed was a long, low, completely empty bicycle rack. I thanked her profusely, and she smiled and said she was glad to help, and that locking my bike unofficially in the front was bad because it was "más a la vista" (more visible, presumably to thieves), and also of course vulnerable to being bumped by cars. Lesson learned: never pre-judge formally dressed older ladies who you think are going to be disapproving.
I started out happily to park my bike in the (I repeat, completely empty) bicycle rack, and then the guard inside the little guardhouse by the barrier that keeps cars from driving in the side entrance waved and me and said "Ven aquí." At that point I was prepared to throw a fit. Here I had finally found an official parking space, and she was about to tell me that it was reserved for employees or something like that even though no one was using it.
But no: bicycles are welcome to park there, but their owners have to check in at the guard house, and have to hand over a passport or DNI (and get their photos taken, and have their passport or identity number entered into the computer). Then they have to check out when they leave. The idea (according to the guard, who was actually perfectly pleasant) is that "cada uno sale sólo con su bici." Of course without registering the bicycles registering the drivers is kind of futile, but in a way it's nice that the parking inside the gates is actually guarded by a human being, who does actually check people who are leaving with bicycles. (Being a native New Yorker, I have a lock system that is the envy of my friends, and can skillfully secure both wheels while using a u-lock for the frame if I have to, but it's nice not to have to.) After being reassured that I wasn't going to have to go look for a random place to leave the bike on the Castellana (which doesn't have as many bike parking places as it should), I was quite friendly to the guard (fortunately I had my passport with me, because with archives in Spain you never know) and said it was nice to have guarded parking, and that it was hard to find parking generally. "Sí, en España no entendemos mucho de bicis," she agreed. "Pero está mejorando, poco a poco." I said that the problem was the hills (and four months a year the temperature) and she laughed and agreed. And then I went and parked my bike and finally went back to the Sala Cervantes. (I will say that when I returned for it there were two more bikes keeping it company, which was pathetically few given the expanse of rack, but not bad considering it's almost harder to register for a parking space than to get a researcher's card at the BNE.)
Anyway, when I got to the Sala Cervantes I went through another roll of microfilm. This one was mercifully both shorter and only Rafael Alberti's notebooks. There were a lot of cool drawings, and also some poems and drafts of poems that I quite liked. (Googling I find that "El Soldado" has been made into a song.) Also a long and careful vocabulary list from Spanish into French, surrounding and accompanying translations of Baudelaire (an essay in praise of Victor Hugo) and Claudel, and a shorter vocabulary list of Spanish-Latin, accompanying a translation of Ovid's Amores. So all very interesting (and in pretty good handwriting) but not relevant at all to what I was looking for. (I kept hoping for an English translation, perhaps from one of my authors, but didn't find one.)
After the one microfilm I decided to leave the next for another day, and prepared to request a letter which as far as I can tell mentions Nicolás Guillén, although was not written by him. Alas, it is also a fondo reservado, though the catalogue record does say that there is a "copy" stuck in with another manuscript. Probably on another microfilm. With lots of other totally random things. Me cago en..... Desperate, I looked at the one bibliographic reference I had found for María Teresa León that looked like it might be interesting. As she is less studied than her husband, her notebooks are only in the "fondo antiguo" but not the "fondo reservado" so I was able to request it not on microfilm without having to beg the librarian especially. Woo-hoo, institutional sexism for the win in making things available.
When I got María Teresa León's notebook I recognized the cover immediately from the microfilms I had been looking at. (They photograph the covers, which is weird, because you don't really get a sense of material from them.) It was a spiral bound, odd shaped thing, like a stenographer's or reporters notebook, but unlined. She used it with the spiral at the top (unlike Alberti, who I think kept the spiral at the side), and wrote amazingly straight short lines. The only problem is that she wrote in pencil. And pencil fades lighter, and paper (especially if it isn't acid free) fades darker. Plus of course researchers like me who get their grubby hands on it. (I tried to turn the pages only from the edges, but it was hard because I didn't want to tear the spiral either, and I didn't want them to stick together.)
I've been congratulating myself on going to the BNE in the afternoons when it's much less crowded, but unfortunately now that Daylight Savings Time has ended, that also means an end of natural light during my work hours, and it got hard to read the pencil writing. (They have lamps on the nice big desks, but they throw a glare.) There were a few texts in the notebook written in pen, but although they're nice and dark she also blotted her words a lot with pen. Much neater handwriting with pencil (which is amazing to me in the age before mechanical pencils - or generally really, since being a lefty means that when I wrote with pencils in school I inevitably had smudgy notes and the fleshy left side of my hand from wrist to pinky completely black with lead).
Anyway, I decided after some investigation and thought to quit for the day and go back and try to read the notebook with more care tomorrow. Fortunately, I googled one of the stories by title and found that there is an article about this very notebook publishing one of the stories, and the article nicely details the contents. I'm not going to bother puzzling out the fiction (though I quite want to, because, like Alberti's poems, I think I actually like her writing), but there is an address to the "escuela hispano-americana" that might be promising. It was written in Buenos Aires, and "americana" here means pretty much Tierra del Fuego to Florida, but still, you never know. I hope. I'm having fun in the archives, but I can't say I've found much so far. It does get discouraging. Though if it were easy there would be no thrill of the chase.
When I handed the notebook the friendly BNE librarian who helped me put the microfilm in place two days in a row smiled and wished me a good evening, and I said "hasta mañana" and he said "hasta mañana...oh, mañana no, que es fiesta. Hasta jueves." Which was how I found out about the surprise holiday today. It was dark when I headed out back to find my bike, and I saw the woman who had checked me in laughing and saying something to a man who was obviously replacing her. I waved, and then after undoing locks (in the dark) headed to the guard house to be checked out. Before I could say anything the guard who had just come on duty "¿Eres Rebeca?" and explained that I was the only new person who had checked in that day and wished me a good evening and hasta la próxima. So I'm definitely fichada as a cyclist. The Fulbrighters are unanimous in saying how important it is to be polite and friendly to librarians and security staff at the BNE for research purposes. I should add that it is also important to be friendly to the nice people who watch your bicycle. Though I'd think if they wanted to have what the Dutch call a beveiligde fietsenstalling it would make more sense to just give people little checks with numbers or similar, and make them check in and out that way to make sure they weren't stealing bikes, rather than having to bring a passport to park. I've heard people say that a driver's license is like a DNI. This is the first time I've found a DNI to be like a driver's license!
Today I was tired and a bit sore due to getting somewhat lost on the way home in the evening and therefore having a somewhat longer ride, so my unexpected holiday did not go to waste. (Riding home under an almost full moon where pedestrians kept looming out of the dark and being illuminated by my flashing strobe light only to be revealed as wearing make-up that marked them as witches or wizards or zombies with costumes to match for Halloween was pleasantly spooky. When I finally reached my pueblo of San Isidro it was more or less deserted, of course. But as I turned almost the last corner, past the Plaza Roger de Flor, an all black cat trotted out of the courtyard and across my path to take care of some urgent business under the recycling containers. It wasn't dressed for Halloween of course -- no need as it was naturally in style -- but it was holding its tail in a festive curl like a shepherd's crook, a full snail shell circle, which looked very elegant and jaunty. So perhaps seeing a black cat on Halloween will bring me luck in the archives tomorrow.
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