Eva Baltasar: "I found the love of my life under an oak tree, in the middle of the forest"

BarcelonaFish, the fifth novel that Eva Baltasar (Barcelona, ​​1978), published by Club Editor, tells the passionate yet destructive love story of two women. The first is a writer who narrates her journey of fascination, anguish, fear, and escape from her lover. The second, named Victoria, sells paper cones of fish at street markets and lives in a house reminiscent of those Gothic mansions where anything is possible. Translated into some twenty languages ​​and a Booker Prize finalist with BoulderBaltasar is one of the most internationally renowned authors of Catalan literature. Fish It confirms, once again, the singularity, power, and lyricism of his proposal.

When we start reading Fish We encounter a writer who meets the love of her life at an open-air market. The reader will wonder if that writer, who tells us her story in the first person, is you.

— It's very easy to mistake the narrative voice for me in this book. It's a game I find very amusing. When I meet with readers in book clubs, I've noticed this tendency for them to identify with the voice of the novels.

So we must make it clear from the outset that you are not the one who narrates or lives the love story with Victoria.

— Exactly. She and I are different. Even when she talks about writing, there are statements I could agree with, but others I couldn't.

She says she travels extensively through towns and cities, meeting with readers to discuss her books. "Being surrounded by strangers, talking to strangers, is being alone," she writes. Do you agree?

— It depends on who I'm with. There are clubs where you're aware that the company of the people you're with won't last forever. Sometimes, though, the encounter takes a different turn: I touch on very profound topics and people open up a lot, "become transparent," says the novel's narrator. In sessions like that, there are moments when we look each other in the eye, recognize each other, and share certain ideas that are either in books or that can emerge from them. They have a touch of magic.

Contact with readers is enriching in ways you often don't foresee, right?

— Yes. You always come away enriched from an authentic encounter with other people. If, in some way, that encounter changes me, my writing will also be transformed.

The writer of Fish She finds love outside the book club. Was the starting point for this novel to write a love story?

— I started this book shortly after finishing the previous one, Sunset and fascinationI arrived at it naturally, because in the second part of that novel, the one about fascination, the protagonist created a character, María, who was like a kind of virgin or goddess. The relationship she has with her can be interpreted erotically or romantically. She creates a kind of idol that she adores and loves. I enjoyed finding myself in this realm while writing, and that's how it began. FishThe first sentence I wrote is the first one you read: "That thing I'm about to tell you, happened many years ago."

From that second part ofSunset and fascination I remember that love was intertwined with death.

— In Fish This also happens because the character of Victoria is real, but there are moments when the protagonist wonders to what extent she isn't a kind of archetype. To write this novel, I had to analyze what love meant.

What conclusion have you reached?

— Love often stems from a will to love. You choose a victim and begin to project all that love. Not long ago I read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson, and I thought, relating it to Fish, that the protagonist herself seems to end up loving that more monstrous part of herself, projected onto a woman who, certainly in her own way, is also monstrous.

The protagonist goes to buy a packet of fish and a glass of wine, and when she sees the woman who is going to serve her, she thinks, "That's her." She has found the love of her life, just like that.

— I've found my loves quite suddenly. In fact, I found the love of my life under an oak tree, in the middle of the woods. When I saw him, I said he would be my husband. I went up to him and spoke to him. We haven't gotten married yet, but we will.

It colors infatuation with an ease that in many cases does not occur.

— Since it's happened to me, I find it natural. But you're right, there are more complicated kinds of love. I'm thinking of love through dating apps, or love with people you share a work circle with... It's happened to me that I've recognized someone in a stranger, found a familiarity that I've then explored further. Even so, I've never fallen in love with someone who had a caravan, like Victoria. It's curious, because in BoulderThe protagonist also fell in love with a woman who had a food truck.

What attracts your protagonists to women who work in caravans or food trucks?

— Nomadism. Self-sufficiency. Also, a sense of care, because these women are offering you food. It's possible that behind this facade there's someone completely dark, like Victoria, who steals more from you than she gives...

I don't see it as that dark, Victoria. I find it quite interesting.

— I love it! This is exactly what I wanted to happen.

On the very day they meet, Victoria invites the narrator to her house. It is a place secluded from the world, messy and at the same time opulent.

— Opulence and poverty are intertwined with them. It has a decadent quality.

You yourself compare it to those spaces where time is suspended because contact between life and death is possible. "When Victoria puts the key in the lock, a howl occurs," we read. "It is a ferrous lament, a deep cry that comes from afar, piercing walls that are mountains."

— The house is a reflection of Victoria, and Victoria is also a reflection of an old, centuries-old house, full of objects that seem to come from the depths of time. When I write a novel, I live inside it, and in the case of Fish I wanted to inhabit a space very different from my own. My house is rather bright and has few objects. Victoria's house is a heavy, obsessive, and distressing environment.

I read it almost like a Gothic novel. There's that passage where the protagonist observes a portrait of Victoria's ancestor, with whom she seems to speak. She also imagines that Victoria is a vampire who travels through the centuries and that when she passes in front of a mirror, her body isn't reflected.

— We have all seen, in a friend or relative, or even in a lover, that connection between life and death. The supernatural aura they exude. The epigraph of the novel is from Victor HugoHe says, "Monsters are the true flock of love." It comes from one of his very curious books. What the talking boards say.

The one about spiritualism?

— Exactly. He wrote it during his stays on the island of Jersey. There he met with people who came to see him from Paris to hold séances with the aim of communicating with spirits. Returning to FishThe protagonist has the feeling that the woman in the painting might be living through Victoria. She establishes a dialogue between the various women of the lineage, all of them very powerful and quite monstrous. She imagines that this woman might have gone to steal children for who knows what purpose.

In the relationship between the protagonist and Victoria, the former depends on the latter, who has the power to dominate her. Is this a reflection of the love we have inherited from Romanticism?

— We'd probably call it toxic love now, though I don't like the word. Carson McCullers has a book, The Ballad of the Sad Caféwhere he explains that in any love relationship there is the lover and the beloved. Everyone wants to be the lover, because what the lover intends is to undress and possess the beloved. The beloved sometimes wishes not to be loved, wishes to flee from there, right? In Fish There is a game that begins with a protagonist choosing her beloved, but the beloved ends up possessing her.

That's why I was talking about domination.

— There's a destruction, a digestion of the other, almost. That's what Victoria wants. And that's what she does by eating so much and drinking so much alcohol. The protagonist gradually dissolves as their relationship progresses. If she succeeds, it's thanks to writing. It's what saves many of us. It helps us reclaim our power and even rewrite the past.

Are you interested in writing from a therapeutic perspective? It has been discussed recently in light of... Relic, of Polo GuaschDo you think your literature can have that element?

— There may be a cathartic aspect to what you write. But I see it as a process of deepening my understanding. Until you write a certain book, there were dark areas inside you that are then illuminated.

Personally, I believe there's a depth to the story that doesn't necessarily mean finding solutions to the characters' problems. Some readers criticize books with open endings.

— Writing allows you to descend, to go inward and to the depths. What you gain from all this, even if it illuminates you, can be dark.

To the protagonist of Fish He is particularly offended that Victoria, when she makes the gesture of reading her books, considers them "novels".

— We all have one or two passions that we consider very important. Sometimes someone crushes them. Other times, it's you who sabotages yourself.

Have you ever sabotaged yourself in terms of what you write?

— I don't often find myself in that situation, so I'm very peaceful in that respect. Talking to other people, not necessarily writers, I know that self-sabotage exists... Think about other areas of life, like motherhood or fatherhood. We all have a voice inside that belittles us. It's very damaging because it's always with you. In the end, your harshest critic is yourself, not the person in front of you.

Whether it's toxic or not, the relationship between them isn't healthy. But don't treat it as if it were exceptional.

— A relationship like theirs is not atypical. In their dynamic, one adores the other, and the other dominates her. There is manipulation, a very subtle, disguised psychological abuse. It can end up destroying theself-esteem, another word that is used a lot now.

Let's just say it can destroy you as a person.

— And yet, it's so hard to leave a relationship like that, because on the one hand, something is taken from you, but on the other, you're given something else you desperately need: to feel special, unique, and chosen. There's also the promise of certain things. We all carry a few wounds. The wound of abandonment—how many of us haven't suffered it? If you find someone who pays you some attention, like Victoria, they'll be there for you in this wound, but they'll also mistreat you. It's so hard to let go.

There's a chapter that reminded me of Misery by Stephen King, but you shy away from this path of thriller. Because?

— There's undoubtedly a part of Victoria that genuinely wants to care for the writer, but beneath this lies her possessive need, a desire to overwhelm and absorb her. Victoria has a great need to shine, but she realizes that it's the other woman who shines, and she wants to shine through this devouring. The writer feels suffocated and like she's dying. At first, she doesn't know if she's been abandoned to Victoria, but she can't accept staying there with her.