The Cemetery of Untold Stories

“So, it’s a true story, not like you made it up? It was a question readers often asked. Alma was weary of explaining that a novelist should not subject herself to the tyranny of what really happened.”

Several times throughout the book, characters ask whether a story is true. For Alma and other writers, however, relaying the facts is not nearly as important as conveying an emotional truth; to this end, fictitious plots or situations sometimes articulate a philosophical message better than the dry elements of reality ever could.

“To close a story, the old people back home would utter a chant. Colorín colorado, este cuento se ha acabado. This tale is done. Release the duende to the wind. But how to exorcise a story that had never been told?”

This chant signals the end of a story and also releases the duende, which is a spirit or an enchanted being, such as an elf. In this context, the duende is akin to the energy that surrounds a creative work. Alma believes that holding too much of this creative spirit inside can ultimately damage a person, and the novel implies that this is what eventually happens to her.

“Alma thinks of all those poems claiming immortality, and in a way, it’s true. Here she was reading and teaching them to the next and the next generation. That’s why in certain tribes they say when an old person dies, a library is gone.”

In this passage, Alma and Brava debate the importance of ensuring that a story is written down and published. Brava firmly believes in the lasting power of oral storytelling, but Alma knows that stories can be lost, and her certainty on this point is rooted in her own failure at convincing her father to share his stories about the past.

“Did these things really happen? That isn’t the point, Pepito explains. These stories are about real passions in people’s hearts. They tell of all that is possible.”

Pepito explains to Perla that the relevance of the myths that he reads to her are measured not by their factual accuracy, but by their emotional truth. Perla comes to understand that even fantastical stories can bring solace if they resonate with the reader’s life.

“Way back, Filomena destroyed Perla’s peace of mind. The story has been buried so deep, it should have rotted into oblivion. But like Lazarus in la Biblia, it keeps coming back to life, a ghost that is not a ghost, but her own living breathing betrayer of a husband whose face she saw resurrected in the face of that darling little boy.”

Although Perla tries to forget that Tesoro seduced Filomena, the kernel of doubt about his faithfulness still resides within her. Just as the pressure of untold stories wreaks a form of destruction upon Alma, Perla’s repressed anger at Tesoro’s betrayal erupts violently when she learns of his newest betrayal. Thus, her untold story ultimately destroys her life, emphasizing this recurring theme from a unique angle.

“Filomena is not about to contradict el Barón’s protégé, but according to her father, el Jefe was the strong leader the country needed. During his rule, there was order, respect. A man could put a peso outside his door and the next morning it was still there. Perhaps Don Manuel’s friends were thieves who stole money left lying around?”

Filomena’s objection to Manuel’s negative characterization of El Jefe reveals the mixed legacy of the dictator in the Dominican Republic. Alvarez uses this moment of ambiguity in the novel to convey the broader idea that although some people believe him to be the strong man the country needed, others are too aware of Trujillo’s atrocities to accord him any respect.

“She bolts the door and leans back on it. On the other side lies the world that keeps disappointing her, as it does all who don’t take hold of their own story.”

Filomena shoos Florian away when he enters the cemetery to make sexual advances on her, and as she ejects him from the sacrosanct realm of untold stories, her musings reflect her difficult relationship with the hardships of everyday life in her community. He tells her that people have been questioning her mental health because they hear her talking to someone in the cemetery. The incident makes her reflect that Perla is in trouble now because she allowed Tesoro to dictate the course of her life.

“Sometimes the best handkerchief is a story.”

Upon hearing Filomena crying, Bienvenida starts to tell her a story. She begins with the moment she first met El Jefe, lingering over her descriptions of happier days in order to provide Filomena with a sense of calm and peace. The exchange reflects an open attempt at Using Stories to Heal and Connect.

“The veil of innocence is slowly, painfully being stripped from my eyes as well. […] How did I end up with a man like el Jefe? It’s a question not even the writer of my story will be able to answer for me.”

Bienvenida’s anguished question reveals that this issue is a central source of conflict in her life, for even after her death, she has no reasonable answer and does not know why she remained loyal to her husband despite his violence and atrocities. Her reluctance to have her story told suggests that she remains unsure of the extent of her culpability in El Jefe’s long-lasting reign of violence.

“That’s what she loves most about being here: everything triggers a memory. The island is mined with madeleines. So many stories!”

Alma makes this comment when she considers returning to live in the Dominican Republic, where she spent the first several years of her life. The reference to madeleines is an allusion to French novelist Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time, which was originally published in English as Remembrance of Things Past. In Proust’s novel, the act of eating a madeleine invokes many memories for the narrator.

“Dr. Beale falls silent, looking at some view visible only to her. What is her story? I wonder. Not the stories she has told me—medical school, the war, ambulance driving, but the story we keep to ourselves or even from ourselves about who we are and what we love and whether our lives reflect that.”

In this passage, Manuel recognizes that Dr. Beale is also a person who conceals untold stories. Manuel is not certain that his life has reflected who and what he loves, and his later affair with Tatica will also test his understanding of his identity and chosen values. In this moment, his sense of unease over secret truths emphasizes The Importance of Being Seen, and acknowledges the role of stories in that process.

“I now see it’s not money that makes me prettier, it’s happiness. […] The church has become less of a comfort, more a confinement. How to contain the wild heart within a corral of ten commandments.”

Bienvenida and Arístides fall in love, which is an unexpected event for both of them, given the grief that they have experienced. Bienvenida’s civil marriage to Trujillo, and then her divorce, are not accepted by the Catholic Church, and neither is her relationship with Arístides. She therefore feels that life and love are too multifaceted to be controlled by the dictates of religious dogma.

“I find myself thinking of Alfa Calenda, the relief I used to get from visiting this world of make-believe with Mamá. The faces and places of my childhood, the stories, the poems, the smells, the sounds, the voices murmuring in that lyrical mother tongue, memories and dreams—all that I left behind, all that was lost of me in English, lives on there.”

The fantastical world of Alfa Calenda served as a comfort to Manuel when he was a child and needed an escape from his father’s cruelty. As an adult, Alfa Calenda becomes a repository for his most deeply felt and hidden identity, and although he wants to share this part of himself with his daughters, their lack of interest drives a wedge between them and intensifies his existential loneliness.

“I have something to confess, Doña Bienvenida. Something that must never see the light of day, or the pages of a novel, a secret I took with me to my grave. I feel a stab of pain and look around wildly for the shore of silence to return to. But it’s already too late. The undertow has pulled me in over my head. All that is left of me is the story.”

In this moment, Manuel opts for The Importance of Being Seen and decides to reveal his innermost truths. The secret that Manuel has taken to his grave is his enduring shame over having an affair with Tatica and then having her deported when her presence became too much of a risk. The guilt and shame of this act has eaten away at him, and he believes that his shame has also caused his death. He sees this storytelling exchange with Bienvenida as a chance to unburden his soul and find a form of redemption.

“Perla finds it difficult to pay attention, the throng of horrible memories nipping at her heels. But slowly, the story enters her. She listens, feeling relieved, accompanied, her grief is being shared. Others have suffered. Others have done wicked things and lived to tell about them.”

After murdering Tesoro’s mistress and young son, the imprisoned Perla wants to die in atonement for her crimes, and her silence reflects the novel’s thematic focus upon the anguish of untold stories. However, she soon finds comfort in the mythological stories that Pepito tells her, and her interest in this topic reflects the importance of Using stories to Heal and Connect, even in the most dire of circumstances.

“She is done believing she can unearth the mysteries of another’s heart. No less her father’s. Whatever stories Manuel Cruz refused to tell, it’s not for Scheherazade to resurrect them. […] The untold is sacred ground. Whatever stories are buried there should be left alone. It’s called the afterlife for a reason.”

After tracking her father’s mysterious payments to the nursing home and failing to connect with Tatica, Alma realizes that she will never know Manuel’s full story or understand his untold secrets. In the absence of the man himself, she must therefore honor his silence and leave his memory undisturbed.

“Visiting Tatica, Alma realized how little she knew her father. Only the small nation of Papi in the large continent of Manuel Cruz. The guarded, daughter-proofed stories he dished out over the years turned out to be impediments to the deep country of whoever else it was he was.”

Alma realizes that even someone who is very close can still be a mystery, and she feels the bittersweet tension of the realization that she has only ever understood a mere fragment of who her father really was. His carefully curated stories about his life offered his daughters only a glimpse and served to prevent further investigation.

“I devised a whole theory: happiness is not a static state. Happiness is circulatory. If you stop the flow of blood, what happens? The patient dies? Bienvenida guesses. Exactly. By keeping myself to myself, I stopped the flow.”

Manuel, in his afterlife, realizes that sharing his stories, especially of Alfa Calenda, provides him with a way of keeping his happiness circulating, and thereby keeping himself alive in some form. The novel therefore implies that sharing and communicating with others is a viable way to connect and to increase one’s happiness.

“Don’t torture yourself this way, Bienvenida, Manuel says softly. We have to live our natures out, for better or worse. And regrets are just a way to make the same mistakes over and over.”

Bienvenida castigates herself for being too weak to acknowledge her faults, as is evidenced by the fact that she allowed her grandchildren to believe she saw Trujillo for the brutal man he was and left him. Manuel consoles her, saying that her nature is to protect people—even herself—from hard truths.

“Listening to all these stories has opened so many windows in Filomena’s life. […] each one offering a different view of the world. Even the disturbing ones that frighten and confuse her—maybe someday she will understand them, too, and their anguished wailing will turn to birdsong. So much sadness, so much wonder, so much joy. Her heart is messy with feelings, her mind with possibilities, twists and turns. It was simpler before. And yet, she would not go back. Now there is room in her heart for everyone, or most everyone.”

Many characters focus on Using Stories to Heal and Connect, and Filomena is most notable in her ability to empathize with people whose lives are very dissimilar to her own. As an avid and objective listener to their stories, she can see their faults but also their humanity, and she shows great compassion and understanding as she bears witness to their secret truths.

“La doña’s head is packed with stories. Sure, everybody’s head is full of memories, noticias, chismes, worries. But in addition to all of these, Doña Alma has welcomed so many stories in that small head of hers, it gets stuffed, like a nose when you have a bad cold.”

Although her metaphors are very down-to-earth and lack the effortless poetry that Alma’s own musings reflect, Filomena understands the subtle nuances of the untold stories that continue to haunt her employer. Alma hears stories from everywhere, but because she is no longer writing them down, they clog her mind, making her forgetful and distracted.

“Everything on earth stops me and whispers to me, and what they tell me is their story.”

Pepito sees this line scribbled in Alma’s notebook. He is not sure if Alma is describing her mind being stuffed with stories or if she has simply written a random line that pleases her. However, as the whole of the novel implies, this line is actually a literal description of how Alma experiences life now.

“Tonight, one of these unstoried will be leaving, her tale soon to be published by a rising star, a professor turned novelist. Every night there has been less of her as she undergoes draft after draft. She wants to be left untold, the bliss of anonymity. Doesn’t anyone consider that the most popular of epitaphs is REST IN PEACE?”

The bitterness of this passage reveals the more negative aspects involved in The Importance of Being Seen, for Bienvenida would be content to remain peacefully anonymous. Pepito, Alma’s literary executor, is now writing the story of Bienvenida, thereby causing her essence to fade from the cemetery. Manuel envies her because she will be seen and understood as he can never be, but Bienvenida believes that the publication of her story will force her to relive her mistakes.