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Amalfitano received the next letter from
San Sebastian
. In it, Lola told him that
she'd gone with Imma to the asylum at Mondragon to visit the poet, who lived
there, raving and demented, and that the guards, priests disguised as security
guards, wouldn't let them in. In San Sebastian they had plans to stay with a
friend of Imma's, a Basque girl named Edurne, who had been an ETA commando and
had given up the armed struggle when democracy came, and who didn't want them
in her house for more than one night, saying she had lots to do and her husband
didn't like unexpected guests. Her husband's name was Jon, and guests really
did make him nervous, as Lola had opportunity to observe. He shook, he flushed
as red as a glowing clay pot, he always seemed about to burst out shouting
although he never spoke a word, he was sweaty and his hands shook, he was
constantly moving, as if he couldn't sit still for two minutes at a time.
Edurne herself was very relaxed. She had a little boy (though Lola and Imma
never saw him, because Jon always found a reason to keep them out of his room)
and she worked almost full-time as a street educator, with junkie families and
the street people who huddled on the steps of the cathedral of San Sebastian and
only wanted to be left alone, as Edurne explained, laughing, as if she'd just
told a joke that only Imma understood, because neither Lola nor Jon laughed.
That night they had dinner together and the next day they left. They found a
cheap boardinghouse that Edurne had told them about and they hitchhiked back to
Mondragon. They weren't allowed into the asylum this time either, but they
settled for studying it from the outside, noting and committing to memory all
the dirt and gravel roads they could see, the gray walls, the rises and curves
of the land, the walks taken by the inmates and their caretakers, whom they
watched from a distance, the curtains of trees following one after the other at
unpredictable intervals or in a pattern they didn't understand, and the brush
where they thought they saw flies, by which they deduced that some of the
inmates and maybe even a worker or two urinated there in the dark or as night
fell. Then they sat together by the side of the road and ate the cheese
sandwiches they'd brought from
San
Sebastian
, without talking, or musing as if to
themselves on the fractured shadows that the asylum of Mondragon cast over its
surroundings.

For their third try, they called to make an appointment.
Imma passed herself off as a reporter from a
Barcelona
newspaper and Lola claimed to be a
poet. This time they got to see him. Lola thought he looked older, his eyes
sunken, his hair thinner than before. At first they were accompanied by a
doctor or priest, who led them down the endless corridors, painted blue and
white, until they came to a nondescript room where the poet was waiting. It was
Lola's impression that the asylum people were proud to have him as a patient.
All of them knew him, all of them greeted him as he headed to the garden or
went to receive his daily dose of tranquilizers. When they were alone she told
him that she'd missed him, that for a while she'd kept watch over the
philosopher's apartment in the Ensanche, and that despite her perseverance
she'd never seen him again. It's not my fault, she said, I did everything I
could. The poet looked her in the eyes and asked for a cigarette. Imma was
standing next to the bench where they were sitting and wordlessly she handed
him a cigarette. The poet said thank you and then he said perseverance. I was,
I was, I was, said Lola, who was turned toward him, her gaze fixed on him,
although out of the corner of her eye she saw that Imma, after flicking her
lighter, had taken a book out of her bag and begun to read, standing there like
a tiny and infinitely patient Amazon, the lighter still visible in one of her
hands as she held the book. Then Lola started to talk about the trip they had
made together. She spoke of highways and back roads, problems with chauvinist
truck drivers, cities and towns, nameless forests where they had pitched camp,
rivers and gas station bathrooms where they had washed. The poet, meanwhile,
blew smoke out of his mouth and nose, making perfect rings, bluish nimbuses,
gray cumulonimbuses that dissolved in the park breeze or were carried off
toward the edge of the grounds where a dark forest rose, the branches of the
trees silver in the light falling from the hills. As if to gain time, Lola
described the two previous visits, fruitless but eventful. And then she told
him what she had really come to say: that she knew he wasn't gay, she knew he
was a prisoner and wanted to escape, she knew that love, no matter how
mistreated or mutilated, always left room for hope, and that hope was her plan
(or the other way around), and that its materialization, its objectification,
consisted of his fleeing the asylum with her and heading for France. What about
her? asked the poet, who was taking sixteen pills a day and recording his
visions, and he pointed at Imma, who read on undaunted, still standing, as if
her skirts and underskirts were made of concrete and she couldn't sit down.
She'll help us, said Lola. In fact, the plan was hers in the first place. We'll
cross into
France
over the mountains, like pilgrims. We'll make our way to Saint-Jean-de-Luz and
take the train to
Paris
,
traveling through the countryside, which is the prettiest in the world at this
time of year. We'll live in hostels. That's Imma's plan. She and I will work
cleaning or taking care of children in the wealthy neighborhoods of
Paris
while you write
poetry. At night you'll read us your poems and make love to me. That's Imma's
plan, worked out to the last detail. After three or four months I'll be
pregnant, and that will prove for once and for all that you aren't a non-breeder,
the last of your line. What more can our enemy families want I'll keep working
a few more months, but when the time comes, Imma will have to work twice as
hard. We'll live like mendicants or child prophets while Paris trains a distant
eye on fashion, movies, games of chance, French and American literature,
gastronomy, the gross domestic product, arms exports, the manufacture of
massive batches of anesthesia, all mere backdrop for our fetus's first few
months. Then, when I'm six months pregnant, we'll go back to
Spain
, though this time we won't cross over at
Irun
but at La Jonquera
or Port Bou, into Catalan country. The poet looked at her with interest (and
also at Imma, who never took her eyes off his poems, poems he'd written perhaps
five years ago, he thought), and he began to blow smoke rings again, in the
most unlikely shapes, as if he'd spent his long stay in Mondragon perfecting
that peculiar art. How do you do it? asked Lola. With the tongue, and by
pursing the lips a certain way, he said. Sometimes by making a kind of fluted
shape. Sometimes like someone who's burned himself. Sometimes like sucking a
small to medium dick. Sometimes like shooting a Zen arrow with a Zen bow into a
Zen pavilion. Ah, I understand, said Lola. You, read a poem, said the poet.
Imma looked at him and raised the book a little higher, as if she was trying to
hide behind it. Which poem? Whichever one you like best, said the poet. I like
them all, said Irnma. So read one, said the poet. When Imma had finished
reading a poem about a labyrinth and Ariadne lost in the labyrinth and a young
Spaniard who lived in a
Paris
garret, the poet asked if they had any chocolate. No, said Lola. We don't smoke
these days, said Imma, we're focusing all our efforts on getting you out of
here. The poet smiled. I didn't mean that kind of chocolate, he said, I meant
the other kind, the kind made with cocoa and milk and sugar. Oh, I see, said
Lola, and they both were forced to admit they hadn't brought anything like that
either. They remembered that they had cheese sandwiches in their bags, wrapped
in napkins and aluminum foil, and they offered them to him, but the poet seemed
not to hear. Before it began to get dark, a flock of big blackbirds flew over
the park, vanishing northward. A doctor approached along the gravel path, his
white robe flapping in the evening breeze. When he reached them he asked the
poet how he felt, calling him by his first name as if they'd been friends since
adolescence. The poet gave him a blank look, and, calling him by his first name
too, said he was a little tired. The doctor, whose name was Gorka and who
couldn't have been more than thirty, sat down beside him and put a hand on his
forehead, then took his pulse. You're doing fucking great, man, he said. And
how are the ladies? he asked, with a smile full of health and cheer. Imma
didn't answer. Lola had the sense that Imma was dying behind her book. Just
fine, she said, it's been a while since we saw each other and we're having a
wonderful time. So you knew each other already? asked the doctor. Not me, said
Imma, and she turned the page.
 
I knew
him,
 
said Lola, we were friends a few
years ago, in
Barcelona
, when he lived in
Barcelona
. In fact, she
said, looking up at the last blackbirds, the stragglers, taking flight just as someone
turned on the park lights from a hidden switch in the asylum, we were more than
friends. How interesting, said Gorka, his eyes on the birds, which at that time
of day and in the artificial light had a burnished glow. What year was that?
asked the doctor. It was 1979 or 1978, I can't remember now, said Lola in a
faint voice. I hope you won't think I'm indiscreet, said the doctor, but I'm
writing a biography of our friend and the more information I can gather on his
life, the better, wouldn't you say? Someday he’ll leave here, said Gorka,
smoothing his eyebrows, someday the Spanish public will have to recognize him
as one of the greats, I don't mean they'll give him a prize, hardly, no
Principe de Asturias or Cervantes for him, let alone a seat in the Academy,
literary careers in Spain are for social climbers, operators, and ass kissers,
if you'll pardon the expression. But someday he'll leave here. There's no
question about that. Someday I'll leave, too. And so will my patients and my
colleagues 'patients. Someday all of us will finally leave Mondragon, and this
noble institution, ecclesiastical in origin, charitable in aim, will stand
abandoned. Then my biography will be of interest and I'll be able to publish
it, but in the meantime, as you can imagine, it's my duty to collect
information, dates, names, confirm stories, some in questionable taste, even
damaging, others more picturesque, stories that revolve around a chaotic center
of gravity, which is our friend here, or what he's willing to reveal, the
ordered self he presents, ordered verbally, I mean, according to a strategy I
think I understand, although its purpose is a mystery to me, an order
concealing a verbal disorder that would shake us to the core if ever we were to
experience it, even as spectators of a staged performance. Doctor, you're a
sweetheart, said Lola. Imma ground her teeth. Then Lola began to tell Gorka
about her heterosexual experience with the poet, but her friend sidled over and
kicked her in the ankle with the pointed toe of her shoe. Just then, the poet,
who had begun to blow smoke rings again, remembered the apartment in
Barcelona's Ensanche and remembered the philosopher, and although his eyes
didn't light up, part of his bone structure did: the jaws, the chin, the hollow
cheeks, as if he'd been lost in the Amazon and three Sevillian friars had
rescued him, or a monstrous three-headed friar, which held no terror for him
either. So, turning to Lola, he asked her about the philosopher, said the
philosopher's name, talked about his stay in the philosopher's apartment, the
months he'd spent in Barcelona with no job, playing stupid jokes, throwing
books that he hadn't bought out the window (as the philosopher ran down the
stairs to retrieve them, which wasn't always possible), playing loud music,
practically never sleeping and laughing all the time, taking the occasional
assignment as a translator or lead reviewer, a liquid star of boiling water.
And then Lola was afraid and she covered her face with her hands. And Imma, who
had at last put the book of poems away in her pocket, did the same, covering
her face with her small, knotty hands. And Gorka looked from the two women to
the poet and laughter bubbled up inside him. But before the laughter could fade
in his placid heart, Lola said the philosopher had recently died of AIDS. Well,
well, well, said the poet. He who laughs last, laughs best, said the poet. The
early bird doesn't always catch the worm, the poet said. I love you, said Lola
The poet got up and asked Imma for another cigarette. For tomorrow, he said.
The doctor and the poet made their way down one path toward the asylum. Lola
and Imma took a different path toward the gate, where they ran into the sister
of another lunatic and the son of a laborer, also mad, and a woman with a
sorrowful look whose cousin was interned in the asylum.

They returned the next day but were told that the patient
was on bedrest. The same thing happened the following days. One day their money
ran out, and Imma decided to take to the road again, this time heading south,
to Madrid, where she had a brother who had done well for himself under the
democracy and whom she planned to ask for a loan. Lola didn't have the strength
to travel and the two women agreed that she should wait at the boardinghouse, as
if nothing had happened, and Imma would be back in a week. Alone, Lola killed
time writing long letters to Amalfitano in which she described her daily life
in
San Sebastian
and the area around the asylum, which she visited every day. Clinging to the
fence, she imagined that she was establishing telepathic contact with the poet.
Most of the time she would find a clearing in the nearby woods and read or pick
little flowers and bunches of grasses with which she made bouquets that she
dropped through the railings or took back to the boardinghouse. Once one of the
drivers who picked her up on the highway asked if she wanted to see the
Mondragon cemetery and she said she did. He parked the car outside, under an
acacia tree, and tor a while they walked among the graves, most of them with
Basque names, until they came to the niche where the driver's mother was
buried. Then he told Lola that he'd like to fuck her right there. Lola laughed
and warned him that they would be in plain view of any visitor coming along the
cemetery's main path. The driver thought for a few seconds, then he said:
Christ, you're right. They went looking for a more Private spot and it was all
over in less than fifteen minutes. The driver's last name was Larrazabal, and
although he had a first name, he didn't want to tell her what it was. Just
Larrazabal, like my friends call me, he said. Then he told Lola that this
wasn't the first time he'd made love in the cemetery. He'd been there with a
sort-of girlfriend before, with a girl he'd met at a club, and with two
prostitutes from
San Sebastian
.
As they were leaving, he tried to give her money, but she wouldn't take it.
They talked for a long time in the car. Larrazabal asked her whether she had a
relative at the asylum, and Lola told him her story. Larrazabal said he'd never
read a poem. He added that he didn't understand Lola's obsession with the poet.
I don't understand your fascination with fucking in the cemetery either, said
Lola, but I don't judge you for it. True, Larrazabal admitted, everyone's got
obsessions. Before Lola got out of the car, at the entrance to the asylum,
Larrazabal snuck a five-thousand-peseta note into her pocket. Lola noticed but
didn't say anything and then she was left alone under the trees, in front of
the iron gate to the madhouse, home to the poet who was supremely ignoring her.