Maestro Mateo (review)

Fiction and Film

González Viaña is a prolific Peruvian author who has published more than a dozen books and critical articles as well as stories and novels that explore reality and a wide variety of social, political, and philosophical issues. His latest book for adults, Vallejo en los infiernos (2009), narrates the imprisonment of one of Latin America's most influential poets, César Vallejo. Maestro Mateo is González Viaña's first children's storybook.

Maestro Mateo recounts the childhood of the main character, twenty-nine-year-old Martín, on his return to his hometown in Northern Perú. Upon his arrival he finds that his beloved pet dog, Mateo, has been mortally injured in an accident. The narration time oscillates between the past and the present. This stylistic recourse triggers Mateo and Martín's regression in time, where both encounter a number of situations that explore certain philosophical issues.

The book is divided into sixteen chapters. Throughout his travels, Martín questions established truths about life, death, and the idea of eternal life. Early on, in chapter 2, González Viaña mentions Dante's The Divine Comedy, and the discussion between Martín and his deceased grandfather about heaven, hell, and purgatory parallel Dante's Divine Comedy dialogues with the dead. Martín's conversations with the barber, the blind fisherman, and Soledad in chapters 6, 7, and 9 raise the question of the brevity of life; after these encounters the image and environment of each interlocutor vanish in the air, just like a mirage or a life dissolved and recovered only in memories: "Todo se borró" (59).

One leitmotiv in the book is the question about death. Martín's memories keep his deceased relatives and friends alive. His dream reenacts episodes of his life and makes them assume reality one more time in his mind. The story's image as a dream involves Calderonian undertones as in La vida es sueño, embodied in the dying dog, Mateo. In chapter 4, Martín's father calls Mateo "the ghost dog" (perro fantasma) since he is only seen by Martín. Mateo, the text suggests, is the protagonist's invention to enable Martín to relive the past. Martín's life/dream is enriched by these encounters.

In chapters 7–10, 12, and 13, the idea of the story as Martín's dream is more patent, particularly in chapter 7, where the conversation between Martín and the blind Tejada is focused on the idea that life is a dream of a blind person, or a mirror. Blindness in this sense is a metaphor for the lack of ability to examine the inner self and reality: "El futuro se te hace más claro con los ojos cerrados" (63). The repeated reference to mirrors in chapters 7, 8, and 14 contributes to the idea of quest. The mirror also constitutes an illustrative and characteristic symbol of physical and emotional displacement. It is a placeless dimension in which one wants to see oneself. Martín, however, encounters only virtual spaces similar to those found in a dream.

Chapters 11 through 13 introduce Martín's life in the United States as an illegal immigrant. This part of the book seems somewhat out of place. Its only relation to the rest of the theme is the personal quest represented by the protagonist's trip to the North. Even though there is a slight connection between this topic and the rest of the story, it seems that it is introduced without much transition and diminishes the metaphorical meaning of the metaphysical journey.

The three final chapters reinforce the idea of the story as somebody's dream, or a dream of a dying person/dog. In chapter 15 the voyage ends. Mateo disappears in the middle of the forest, where he later is found lying on the ground, dead. Martín describes Mateo's eyes and skin as "un espejo negro" (121). The scene...