Foreword to ‘Confesiones en el cautiverio’

I began to get to know Roberto Joaquín on October 26, 1993. Before that day, I had barely exchanged a few greetings and glances with him, and he seemed to me a young man full of life, unpretentious, pleasant. But that day, reading one of his first stories, I discovered that a writer lived in him, and from then on he seemed to me a deep being, different, sensitive to the beauty of life. That day I began to admire him.

All his writings have passed through my hands, very varied and different from one another; and today, after two years of knowing and loving him, I admire him much more, and his stories, his letters, his thoughts and his poems still fill me with a feeling of joy and wonder, for the ease and precision with which he speaks of intangible things such as love, life, death and feelings. I read his stories enraptured by so much beauty, by the sublime and profound way in which he writes.

Confesiones en el cautiverio (Confessions in Captivity), his second published book, is full of him, of his joy, of his wit, of his passion for woman and for life, of his warmth, of his sensitivity and his thought. Reading it is like entering his world, getting to know him a little.

This collection of stories, which I saw being born and perfected, deals with very diverse subjects. In them their author varies his style, so that they differ from one another, and also from the stories of his previous book, for they now take on a greater psychological and spiritual depth.

The first story in this book, titled Preludio (Prelude), is inspired by the piano piece Prelude in C-sharp minor by the Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. The description of this piece that his grandmother of Chilean origin, Doña Sara Raquel Muñoz de Franco, a lover of classical music, once gave Roberto Joaquín (when he was only nine years old) proves indispensable to the making of this story, as the author himself confesses.

Although neither place nor date is specified in it, the author describes, in an impressionistic style and in detail, the agony and the thoughts of a man who is accidentally buried alive.

When Roberto Joaquín Pérez-Franco was only sixteen years old, he wrote the first story of this collection, La lluvia sobre el mar (Rain over the sea). Its plot is woven by combining the sublimity of love and the beauty of nature. It is the shortest in the collection, but undoubtedly the most passionate. I still remember the first time I read it, barely a few days after meeting Roberto Joaquín. This story was the first that stirred, with its overflowing passion, the deepest fibers of my heart.

“She pierced me through and through, with that bewitching gaze that always makes me fall in love, and we spoke without words.” With phrases like this, Roberto Joaquín Pérez-Franco pierced me through and through as well, and made me understand that I would no longer be able to live without the charm of his poetry, and that I was destined to die in love with his poet’s soul.

Confesiones en el cautiverio, the story that gives this collection its title, is one of the two stories written in old Spanish. In it there appears for the first time the dominant element of Roberto Joaquín Pérez-Franco’s latest writings: the love between a man and a woman as a complement to the love of God.

In this story he plays with the history of La Heroica Villa de Los Santos, combining with reality strokes of fantasy that fit perfectly into the history. The confessions of the priest held captive in the cellar, beneath the Church, are more than they seem at first sight, for they hold a deep symbolism, showing us the human side of these servants of God who, because they live under strict moral rules, are forbidden to love a woman, and who are, besides, like every human being, prone to error.

The second story in the collection written in old Spanish is Carta en defensa de Balboa al Cardenal Cisneros (Letter in Defense of Balboa to Cardinal Cisneros). In it, the author again uses history as a basis, adding a few touches of fantasy, and takes the opportunity to praise the figure of Balboa and to express some personal opinions on the life of this complex man, on his courage, his great vision and his persistence in the face of adversity.

Indeed, having documented himself extensively in history texts, the author does not, with this story, violate any of the known details about Balboa. He does offer interesting conjectures about the way some events might have unfolded.

The story Arum Bakir Ehrab is a prose variation on the poem of the same name by the Panamanian author Eduardo Ritter Aislán. To write this story, the author scrupulously studied Ritter’s work, and took extreme care to use only phrases and words of the poem’s author, linking them in the appropriate sequence to sketch his own version of the story.

This story, being a true collage of Ritter Aislán’s poems, must be classed as lyrical prose, for it is pure poetry spun into sentences by the artistic hand of Roberto Joaquín Pérez-Franco.

As a tribute to the talent and musical skill of Professor Bolívar Rodríguez, Roberto Joaquín writes Las cuerdas doradas (The Golden Strings). In this story one senses a certain longing for the customs of young people half a century ago, as is the specific case of lovers’ serenades. The author had the privilege of taking guitar lessons with Professor Rodríguez, and it is in this period that this beautiful story was born.

El amor del último retoño (The Love of the Last Sprout) is the most complex story in the collection, and at the same time the most complete and beautiful. Humorous, fanciful, at times irreverent, always rich in imagination and with a deep message, it tells the story of a young monk in love.

Those of us who, like me, know Roberto Joaquín Pérez-Franco closely recognize in this story a kind of surrealist self-portrait of his true way of being. In the story of the young monk, Roberto Joaquín reveals himself as he really is: a dreamer, imaginative, a believer, and passionate.

With a style and theme similar to his first stories, and reminding us—with his attachment to the land—of his first work, Cuando florece el macano (When the Macano Blooms), the author writes Camino hacia el corral (The Road to the Corral), the second story based on real events, with slight modifications of fantasy. In it, a father tempers his son’s character with a risky test of courage.

In the story Una falta menor (A Minor Offense) one notices in the author for the first time a restlessness and a desire to give his opinion in the political and social field, stating the need to rid his country and his world of injustice and the abuse of power.

Roberto Joaquín Pérez-Franco: the writer, the poet, the friend, the companion, the lover. Sharing his dreams and his thoughts with him, watching him grow and improve in his art, and shining with his triumphs, I have learned so much!

This young writer has filled my life with poetry, with flowers and with joy. While we were together in high school, and also while he was studying abroad, he used to write me love letters every day. I remember that one morning, on my way home, unable to wait any longer, I began to read the letter he had handed me that day (December 13, 1993). It said:

> “Do you care for me?” “I love you.” I love you, you answered, and every cell of my body shouted it to me, I love you, in every corner of my mind it echoed, I love you, I love you, the whole essence of my soul was perfumed with your voice, I love you, and my conscience shouted it to me: “She loves you, you fool,” and my heart rejoiced, I love you, and a smile marked my face, I love you, and I believed you blindly, divine creature, I love you, I believed you as if it were the greatest truth, I love you, as if God had whispered it in my ear, I love you… I looked at you and saw in your divine eyes the gleam of love, I love you, yes, I love you, as if it were the most certain thing in the universe, I love you, undoubtedly it was true, I love you… “Why not?” I thought, and your voice—still frolicking in my ear—made my naked heart blossom, I love you. I heard it a thousand times, I love you, I love you… While the echo of the divine phrase you had spoken still lived in my head, an irrepressible desire seized my heart to shout to you: “I believe you, my love,” and to kiss you until I died between your rose lips. And now, in my loneliness, I am so happy… because I believe you, my love, I believe you!

When I finished reading that letter from Roberto Joaquín, I stopped where I was, and looked at the blue sky and the bright sun; I felt the summer breeze and the passion of youth. And my heart, full of joy, flooded with him, my beloved writer, sent back on the breeze, all the way to his poet’s heart, that sacred creed, that prayer of love written by his soul.

I do not know why I never told him that, in that brief instant, I confessed my love to him once more, even though he was far away from me.

You have written me very beautiful things, Roberto Joaquín, but that letter… that letter is you, as this book of yours is. Simply, deeply, it is you.

I love you. Admiring you,