The last thing I ever thought about was that one day I would write the obituary of Francisco Rico, Paco Rico. Because Paco was immortal.
More than forty years of being friends and keeping guard in better I don’t say what guardhouses. Twenty ago we crossed a controversy in The vanguard on account of Don Quixote and the printing presses of the 17th century, chibaletes, punches, types (serious matter). Very funny. I win. Of course Paco looked at me from the summit of Everest: “You didn’t even last me one round”. Print those throws, Cervantine bizarras, in a non-venal edition of 76 copies, very exquisite, and he sent both to his teacher (and mine) Martín de Riquer, as a referee. His letter is a revelry of grace, humor and impartiality; I left it to a table.
Time passed and I began to translate the Quixote to current Spanish. The last person I would have told would have been him. However he needed it. I needed advice and a sponsor. 2014 coincided with the last update of its monumental edition. We exchanged at least two or three hundred emails that year regarding his notes and other philological matters. In order not to make myself suspicious, I told him that I was rereading it carefully, for pleasure. And every day I sent him an observation, the correction of some error, questions about certain notes, refutations of exposed attributions… After, after, after, the emails flew in both directions, from Madrid to Barcelona and from Barcelona to Madrid, like missiles. Of my observations and corrections I accepted some (let’s see, Rico style, “it could be”, “I had already seen it”), although the best findings (or what seemed like it to me), I kept to myself (because Although one does not belong to the academic world, I have seen that those tricks stick easily).
When the thing was ready, we met and I suggested that he put the prologue to that translation… He told me: “I have been asked many times to translate it…”. I didn’t want to go into that, and I insisted in the prologue. It couldn’t be (when I told him at another lunch that it would be from Vargas Llosa, I don’t know, it seemed to me that he did have some fluff), and we touched noses for a couple of years. Then it passed, and everything was the same as before.
A few weeks ago we talked for a while on the phone. He called me. He asked me to send him a book of mine that has just been republished. He promised her, and I forgot (I just remembered now, and how that book hurts now). That afternoon he was gloomy. “This is over,” he announced to me. I encouraged him (without success). He asked me about the new volume of Out of lost steps, how it was going, when it would be published. He comes out a lot there. It doesn’t always turn out well, but he was excited to appear, and if it was bad, better, the same as he liked the mistreatment of Javier Maras in his novels. He jokingly maintained: “I have already won glory, I don’t need you.” He claimed that he made photocopies of those malicious pages and sent them to his colleagues, who were many (he was part of some thirty or forty academies and cloisters around the world, the most prestigious in his field). He always believed that he did it.
I tell all these things now to forget that I am writing his obituary, and to give myself the illusion that I am telling them to him.
We have laughed, we have traveled together, I published a book for him, he gave me a job, we argued about everything and nothing (he told me that I had a Luciferian pride, and it is not true, as is obvious), we have also talked about women. enough (he infinitely more), of books (less), of friends (at all hours, great sport), of politics (lately little), of the Academy (that, above all, him, his anger, his peace), of the Quixote (for each of us a different book)…
I write everything often now to get out of the shock. You managed, good friend, to piss me off many times, but never make me sad, as sad as I am now. I don’t believe you died. If you were immortal… And you didn’t even smoke.