2666 (29 page)

It was Lola,
Rosa
's
mother, who always traveled with a weapon, never going anywhere without her
stainless-steel spring-loaded switchblade, Amalfitano remembered as he smoked a
Mexican cigarette, sitting in his office or standing on the dark porch. Once
they were stopped in an airport, before
Rosa
was born, and Lola was asked what she was doing with the knife. It's for
peeling fruit, she said.
Oranges
,
apples, pears, kiwis, all kinds of fruit. The officer gave her a long look and
let her go. A year and a few months after that,
Rosa
was born. Two years later, Lola left, still carrying the knife.

Lola's pretext was a plan to visit her favorite poet, who
lived in the insane asylum in Mondragon, near
San Sebastian
. Amalfitano listened to her
explanations for a whole night as she packed her bag and promised she'd come
home soon to him and Rosa. Lola, especially toward the end, used to claim that
she knew the poet, that she'd met him at a party in
Barcelona
before Amalfitano became a part of
her life. At this party, which Lola described as a wild party, a long overdue
party that suddenly sprang to life in the middle of the summer heat and a
traffic jam of cars with red lights on, she had slept with him and they'd made
love all night, although Amalfitano knew it wasn't true, not just because the
poet was gay, but because Lola had first heard of the poet's existence from
him, when he'd given her one of his books. Then Lola took it upon herself to
buy everything else the poet had written and to choose friends who thought the
poet was a genius, an alien, God's messenger, friends who had themselves just
been released from the Sant Boi asylum or had flipped out after repeated stints
in rehab. The truth was, Amalfitano knew that sooner or later she would make
her way to
San Sebastian
, so he chose not to
argue but offered her part of his savings, begged her to come back in a few
months, and promised to take good care of
Rosa
.
Lola seemed not to hear a thing. When she had finished, she went into the
kitchen, made coffee, and sat in silence, waiting for dawn, although Amalfitano
tried to come up with subjects of conversation that might interest her or at
least help pass the time. At six-thirty the doorbell rang and Lola jumped.
They've come for me, she said, and since she didn't move, Amalfitano had to get
up and ask over the intercom who it was. He heard a weak voice saying it's me.
Who is it? asked Amalfitano. Let me in, it's me, said the voice. Who? asked
Amalfitano. The voice, while still barely audible, seemed indignant at the
interrogation. Me me me me, it said. Amalfitano closed his eyes and buzzed the
door open. He heard the sound of the elevator cables and he went back to the
kitchen. Lola was still sitting there, sipping the last of her coffee. I think
it's for you, said Amalfitano. Lola gave no sign of having heard him. Are you
going to say goodbye to
Rosa
? asked
Amalfitano. Lola looked up and said it was better not to wake her. There were
dark circles under her blue eyes. Then the doorbell rang twice and Amalfitano
went to open the door. A small woman, no more than five feet tall, gave him a
brief glance and murmured an unintelligible greeting, then brushed past him and
went straight to the kitchen, as if she knew Lola's habits better than
Amalfitano did. When he returned to the kitchen he noticed the woman's
knapsack, which she had left on the floor by the refrigerator, smaller than
Lola's, almost a miniature. The woman's name was Inmaculada, but Lola called
her Imma. Amalfitano had encountered her a few times in the apartment when he
came home from work, and then the woman had told him her name and what she
liked to be called. Imma was short for Immaculada, in Catalan, but Lola's
friend wasn't Catalan and her name wasn't Immaculada with a double
m,
either,
it was Inmaculada, and Amalfitano, for phonetic reasons, preferred to call her
Inma, although each time he did his wife scolded him, until he decided not to
call her anything. He watched them from the kitchen door. He felt much calmer
than he had expected. Lola and her friend had their eyes fixed on the Formica
table, although Amalfitano couldn't help noticing that both looked up now and
then and stared at each other with an intensity unfamiliar to him. Lola asked
whether anyone wanted more coffee. She means me, thought Amalfitano. Inmaculada
shook her head and said there was no time, they should get moving, since before
long there would be no way out of Barcelona. She talks as if
Barcelona
were a medieval city, thought
Amalfitano. Lola and her friend stood up. Amalfitano stepped forward and opened
the refrigerator door to get a beer, driven by a sudden thirst. To do so, he
had to move Imma's backpack. It was so light it might've held just two shirts
and another pair of black pants. It's like a fetus, was what Amalfitano
thought, and he dropped it to one side. Then Lola kissed him on both cheeks and
she and her friend were gone.

A week later Amalfitano got a letter from Lola, postmarked
Pamplona
. In the letter
she told him that their trip so far had been full of pleasant and unpleasant
experiences. Mostly pleasant. And although the unpleasant experiences could
certainly be called unpleasant,
experiences
might not be the right word.
Nothing unpleasant that happens to us can take us by surprise, said Lola,
because Imma has lived through all of this already. For two days, said Lola, we
were working at a roadside restaurant in
Lerida
,
for a man who also owned an apple orchard. It was a big orchard and there were
already green apples on the trees. In a little while the apple harvest would
begin, and the owner had asked them to stay till then. Imma had gone to talk to
him while Lola read a book by the Mondragon poet (she had all the books he'd
published so far in her backpack), sitting by the Canadian tent where the two
of them slept. The tent was pitched in the shade of a poplar, the only poplar
she'd seen in the orchard, next to a garage that no one used anymore. A little
while later, Imma came back, and she didn't want to explain the deal the
restaurant owner had offered her. The next day they headed back out to the
highway to hitchhike, without telling anyone goodbye.
 
In
Zaragoza
they stayed with an old friend of Imma's from university. Lola was very tired
and she went to bed early and in her dreams she heard laughter and loud voices
and scolding, almost all Imma's but some her friend's, too. They talked about
the old days, about the struggle against Franco, about the women's prison in
Zaragoza
. They talked about a pit, a very deep hole from
which oil or coal could be extracted, about an underground jungle, about a
commando team of female suicide bombers. Then Lola's letter took an abrupt
turn. I'm not a lesbian, she said, I don't know why I'm telling you this, I
don't know why I'm treating you like a child by saying it. Homosexuality is a
lie, it's an act of violence committed against us in our adolescence, she said.
Imma knows this. She knows it, she knows it, she's too clearsighted not to, but
all she can do is help. Imma is a lesbian, every day hundreds of thousands of
cows are sacrificed, every day a herd of herbivores or several herds cross the
valley, from north to south, so slowly but so fast it makes me sick, right now,
now, now, do you understand, Oscar? No, thought Amalfitano, I don't, as he held
the letter in his two hands like a life raft of reeds and grasses, and with his
foot he steadily rocked his daughter in her seat.

Then Lola described again the night when she'd made love
with the poet, who lay in majestic and semisecret repose in the Mondragon
asylum. He was still free back then, he hadn't yet been committed to any
institution. He lived in
Barcelona
,
with a gay philosopher, and they threw parties together once a week or once
every two weeks. This was before I knew you. I don't know whether you'd come to
Spain
yet or whether you
were in
Italy
or
France
or some
filthy Latin American hole. Ihe gay philosopher's parties were famous in
Barcelona
. People said
the poet and the philosopher were lovers, but it never looked that way. One had
an apartment and ideas and money, and the other had his legend and his poetry
and the fervor of the true believer, a doglike fervor, the fervor of the
whipped dog that's spent the night or all its youth in the rain, Spain's
endless storm of dandruff, and has finally found a place to lay its head, no
matter if it's a bucket of putrid water, a vaguely familiar bucket of water.
One day fortune smiled on me and I attended one of these parties. To say I met
the philosopher would be an exaggeration. I saw him. In a corner of the room,
talking to another poet and another philosopher.
 
He
 
appeared
 
to
 
be
 
giving a
 
lecture.
 
Then
 
everything seemed slightly off. The guests were waiting for the poet to
make his entrance. They were waiting for him to pick a fight. Or to defecate in
the middle of the living room, on a Turkish carpet like the threadbare carpet
from the
Thousand and One Nights, a
battered carpet that sometimes
functioned as a mirror, reflecting all of us from below. I mean: it turned into
a mirror at the command of our spasms. Neurochemical spasms. When the poet
showed up, though, nothing happened. At first all eyes turned to him, to see
what could be had. Then everybody went back to what they'd been doing and the
poet said hello to certain writer friends and joined the group around the gay
philosopher. I had been dancing with myself and I kept dancing with myself. At
five in the morning I went into one of the bedrooms. The poet was leading me by
the hand. Without getting undressed, I began to make love with him. I came
three times, feeling the poet's breath on my neck. It took him quite a while
longer. In the semidarkness I made out three shadowy figures in a corner of the
room. One of them was smoking. Another one never stopped whispering. The third
was the philosopher and I realized that the bed was his and the room was the
room where, the gossip was, he and the poet made love. But now I was the one
making love and the poet was gentle with me and the only thing I didn't
understand was why the other three were watching, although I didn't much care,
in those days, if you remember, nothing really mattered. When the poet finally
came, crying out and turning his head to look at his three friends, I was sorry
it wasn't the right time of month, because I would've loved to have his baby.
Then he got up and went over to the shadowy figures. One of them put a hand on
his shoulder. Another one gave him something. I got up and went to the bathroom
without even looking at them. The last party guests were in the living room. In
the bathroom, a girl was asleep in the tub. I washed my face and hands. I
combed my hair. When I came out the philosopher was kicking everyone out who
could still walk. He didn't look the least bit drunk or high. He looked fresh,
as if he'd just got up and drunk a big glass of orange juice. I left with a
couple of people I'd met at the party. At that hour only the Drugstore on Las
Ramblas was open and we headed there without a word. At the Drugstore I ran
into a girl I'd known a few years before who was a reporter for
Ajoblanco,
although
it disgusted her to work there. She started to talk to me about moving to
Madrid
. She asked if I
felt like I needed a change. I shrugged my shoulders. All cities are more or
less the same, I said. What I was really thinking about was the poet and what
he and I had just done. A gay man doesn't do that. Everyone said he was gay,
but I knew it wasn't true. Then I thought about the confusion of the senses and
I understood everything. I knew the poet had lost his way, he was a lost child
and I could save him, give him back a small part of all he'd given me. For
almost a month I kept watch outside the philosopher's building hoping one day
I'd see the poet and he'd ask me to make love with him again. I didn't see him,
but one night I saw the philosopher. I noticed that something was wrong with
his face. When he got closer (he didn't recognize me) I could see he had a
black eye and was covered in bruises. No sign of the poet. Sometimes I tried to
guess, by the lights, what floor the apartment was on.
 
Sometimes
 
I
 
saw shadows behind the
curtains. Sometimes someone, an older woman, a man in a tie, a long-faced
adolescent, would open a window and look out at the grid of
Barcelona
at dusk. One night I discovered I
wasn't the only one there, spying on the poet or waiting for him to appear. A
kid, maybe eighteen, maybe younger, was quietly keeping watch from the opposite
sidewalk. He hadn't noticed me because clearly he was the heedless type, a
dreamer. He would sit at a bar, at an outside table, and he always ordered a
can of Coca-Cola, sipping it slowly as he wrote in a school notebook or read
books that I recognized at a glance. One night, before he could get up from the
table and dash away, I went over and sat down next to him. I told him I knew
what he was doing. Who are you? he asked me, terrified. I smiled and said I was
someone like him. He looked at me the way you look at a crazy person. Don't get
the wrong idea, I said, I'm not crazy, I'm in full Possession of my faculties.
He laughed. You look crazy, he said, even if you aren't. Then he motioned for
the check and he was about to get up when I confessed that I was looking for
the poet, too. He sat down again abruptly, as if I'd clapped a gun to his head.
I ordered a chamomile tea and told him my story. He told me that he wrote
poetry, too, and he wanted the poet to read his poems. There was no need to ask
to know that he was gay and very lonely. Let me see them, I said, and I pulled
the notebook out of his hands. His poems weren't bad. His only problem was that
he wrote just like the poet. These things can't have happened to you, I said,
you're too young to have suffered this much. He made a gesture as if to say
that he didn't care whether I believed him or not. What matters is that it's
well written, he said. No, I told him, you know that isn't what matters. Wrong,
wrong, wrong, I said, and finally he had to cede the point. His name was Jordi
and today he may be teaching at the university or writing reviews for
La
Vanguardia
or
El Periodico.