Necropolis (17 page)

On the other side of the garden, between the bushes, I saw José Maturana. He was waving his arms in the middle of a group of people. It stuck me that it was going to be very difficult for the next speaker. I noticed that Marta was also watching him and thought: now there's a good subject for her newspaper. I told her that and she asked, do you think it's all true? I don't see any reason to doubt it, it's a story that may seem unusual to us, but in Miami, in those neighborhoods that are like a jungle, it may be the most normal thing in the world, a life like any other. She studied him for a few moments and said, there's something about the way he moves that confuses me, but I still don't know what it is; as I listened to him I had the feeling it must all been have a dream, but I don't know, don't pay any attention to me. I looked again, but Maturana had already gone. Don't you think his scars and tattoos are real? the proof of his story is on his body . . . Marta had already stopped listening to me, she was now taking notes, with great concentration, so I went back to the garden in search of dragonflies and robins.

It was getting toward evening and the delegates were chatting and laughing, some drinking coffee, and others already warming their engines with white wine or beer. I caught the fact that the round table
Tendencies in Autofictional Narrative
, chaired by the Congolese Theophilus Obenga, professor at the Sorbonne, had been a great success. I saw him on the way to the bar and heard him say: “Life is above all a narrative, the truths of reality create very clear links of language, which are then stored in the memory and are transformed into experience.” I looked for José Maturana again, but he was not there. Marta, holding a cup of coffee, said to me: I have to get straight down to writing but I don't want to miss dinner, they say there'll be a few words by the honorary president of the ICBM, would it disturb you if I work in your room? Of course not, it's Room 1109, here's the key.

When I was alone, I looked around the throng and spotted Supervielle, so I went up to him and asked him about the afternoon's debate. It was really good, friend, weren't you there? I said no and he started to tell me about it: you know, there's a sentence in Dostoevsky's
Notes from Underground
, which says: “Man is a fickle creature of doubtful reputation, and perhaps, like a chess player, he is more interested in the process of reaching his objective than in the objective itself,” I don't know if you remember it . . . I shook my head and Supervielle continued: that's what we were discussing, my friend, that simple yet profound way of reading experience, what drives a person to make one decision and not another at a specific moment? to get off a train, get on a boat, cross the street? What there is at the end of a life is irrelevant, it isn't the result that makes a life exceptional, but the path trodden, am I being excessively obscure? There are great lives that don't get anywhere, but what does it matter? That's not a paradox. I'm reminded of a text by a twelfth-century Persian poet,
The Conference of the Birds,
I assume you don't know it? I did know it, but I preferred not to contradict him. Anyway, it's all about Simorgh, King of the Birds; everyone's looking for him, everyone would like to find him because they believe that when they do they will be better and happier. A group of birds decides to leave for the mountain where the king has his home. They meet with many obstacles along the way and many turn back or die; only a group of thirty noble birds reaches the summit where Simorgh lives, but when they get there they realize that the throne is empty, the King of the Birds doesn't live there but within each one of them, he has their face, his soul is that of a bird wearied by flight, the flight of a bird searching for Simorgh. The story I'm going to tell in my talk is about chess and that kind of life, that's why I don't want to go deeper into this, I don't want to spoil the surprise for you, I assume you'll be there? Of course, Monsieur Supervielle, it will be an honor.

I drank two more coffees as I walked up and down the corridors, hoping that José Maturana would appear, I wanted to congratulate him on his story that morning, about which, of course, I had already made a few notes. To tell the truth, it had overwhelmed me.

Not meeting anybody, I realized I was in one of those pockets of time that are typical of conferences, moments when nothing is happening, so I decided to go up to my room to rest and see what Marta was doing. I knocked at the door several times but nobody opened. Had she left? was she asleep? I asked the cleaner to open it for me. Just as I was about to lie down on the bed, I heard the bathroom door open and Marta came out, stark naked, wrapped in nothing but a cloud of steam. She had a nice body, with smooth white skin, pear-shaped breasts, a shaved pubic area, and a piercing in her vagina, a silver ring through one of her labia.

I thought you'd gone, I said, I knocked but you didn't hear me, wait a minute, I'll go out so you can get dressed in peace. Marta walked past me and bent over her heaped clothes. Don't worry, it doesn't bother me if you see me, does it bother you? I shook my head. She sat down and lit a cigarette. I asked her about the article, have you written it yet? No, she replied, to tell the truth, I only had a few notes, and I don't know what it was, but they suddenly seemed empty and meaningless, or rather: they didn't have the force I think a true story should have.

She took the towel from her hair and went and hung it on the handle of the bathroom door. Her breasts bobbed up and down as she passed me and I found myself with an erection, which I managed to conceal. From the bathroom she said, and what do you think about this war? I did not reply immediately, not sure of what to say, but she went straight on: or are you one of those pacifists? So I said: it's just one more war, although it could well be a metaphor for all wars, the frustration, the discord, the hatred, the separation; but that's just words, whereas bullets are quite real, they pierce the skin and damage organs, they puncture and maim. The most absurd wars are those that aren't even of any benefit to those who win them, although that doesn't mean there aren't times when it's necessary to fight them. Even knowing full well that nobody will win. There's a perverse logic, a human destiny, that leads to war, and individuals can do nothing to stop it.

As I said this, I recalled images I had seen of the bombing of a church in Colombia with shrapnel-filled gas cylinders, a bombing carried out by the guerillas; I saw the mutilated bodies, the ground soaked with blood, the kind of thing that has been happening for centuries, although you never get used to it; I suddenly found it hard to breathe, and my eyes filled with tears, I was falling into one of those hypersensitive states all too common in convalescents, so I said, I'm sorry, but she came to me and said, cry as much as you want, there's nothing more touching than a man crying; naked as she still was, she embraced me. I was afraid she would become aware of my erection, which was still there, but she did not seem to notice it, only hugged me tighter. One of my tears dripped onto her shoulder, trickled down her back and lodged between her marmoreal buttocks. The scene was like a Pietà, and was interrupted by some cries coming from the corridor; I thought at first that it was my neighbors, embroiled in another argument, but it was not them; these cries were more urgent and desperate, so I broke free of Marta and ran to the door.

A group of male nurses was shouting at the end of the corridor, outside the last room. The cleaner was crying and somebody was consoling her. What was all this? what was happening? Before long, a stretcher appeared. I went closer and saw the blood-drenched bathroom, the body emerging from the tub, lifted by four strong arms. On the pale skin with its ocher reflections I recognized the tattoos, the sun-like eye on the inert forearm, the town in the background: it was José Maturana.

I looked at him, incredulous, as they tipped him onto the stretcher, a bag of bones that seemed to have emptied, the skin like a damp cloth, that mysterious diminishing process that operates on lifeless bodies. They had tried to resuscitate him, but to no avail, which was understandable, judging by the vertical gashes on his forearms: anyone who slashes himself like that means business.

I moved aside to let the stretcher pass, then just stood there, unable to move. Marta came out a second after the elevator closed its doors and only saw the end of the funeral cortege. Who was it? what happened? Maturana, I said, he slashed his wrists. Marta opened her eyes wide, what?! She took a couple of steps along the corridor, then turned back and said, this is a bombshell! I have to call my newspaper. She placed a collect call from my room and, by the time she had hung up, her hands were shaking. I only have forty minutes to write an article! I told her what I had seen but she was so busy with the table lamp, switching on her laptop, plugging in the adaptor, that she did not seem to hear me. Then she said, what title should I give it? Let me see, how about something like
Blood at the Conference
? No, she said, don't be so sensationalistic, that'd be fine for a crime report, this is for the arts section, it has to be a bit more poetic. Go ahead and write the article, I said, and then we'll think of something, in the meantime I'm going to have a look around and maybe grab a bite to eat as well. You're lucky, she said, I have to stay here, bring me a chicken sandwich and a Diet Coke. If you see or find out anything call me, O.K.?

As I left the room, I was overcome with an intense feeling of danger. A strange wind was pushing me toward that room at the end of the corridor, the dead man's room. Everyone seemed to have gone. I tapped nervously at the door and went in. The carpet was soaked in water and blood that had overflowed from the bathtub; I saw towels, tiles glowing red, a bathrobe with the hotel's emblem. The bed still bore the imprint of a body. On the table were papers with notes for his talk, and some open books. I picked up one at random and it turned out to be
Encounters with Amazingly Normal People
, by Walter de la Salle. It was dedicated to José: “How absurd, me dedicating your book to you. With love, Walter.” There were penciled annotations. On page 267, for example: “The death of the fetus is an invention, a way of talking about the formation of life.” On page 347: “The addict is Millie, I changed her age from twenty-five to sixteen to make it more dramatic.” On page 560: “Complete passage from an astrological discussion between L. Ron Hubbard and Kaspar Hauser.” Maturana was the true author of the book. It was his magnum opus.

Among the other books on the table were works by St John of the Cross, with more scribbled notes in the margins (one said: “This is about the eye I saw”), the complete works of Feijóo, and
The Life of Bartolomé de las Casas
(another annotation at random: “He licked the Indians' sores, why?”). I opened his briefcase and found a folder containing photographs; in one of them, two well-built young men were raising a crucifix in a garden, and on the side someone had written: “Sammy and Jairo in Oakland Road.” I shuffled through them quickly until I found one that had the word “Walter” on it: it showed a tall, well-built man, bare-chested, with powerful dorsal muscles and long hair gathered in a ponytail, just like José; in one hand, a crucifix covered in diamonds, and in the other, a microphone; tattoos depicting man's quest for God. I thought of Marta writing in my room, a long way from the real story.

I stood there, looking at Walter's photograph, because there was something in it that held me spellbound; after a while I noticed in the background, in the middle of a group of people standing behind him, a face that looked familiar, a woman, where had I seen her before? I was thinking about this when I heard a noise in the corridor and was immediately on the alert. Somebody had died in this room and sooner or later the police would have to come, so I rushed to the door, and looked out. A police officer was standing there with his back to me, talking on a cell phone, so I slipped out without making a noise.

Downstairs, in the lobby, there was a great deal of agitation. Some police officers were taking notes and the director of the ICBM was making a statement to a TV channel. I caught him saying: “. . . suicide is a mysterious, multifaceted, and very profound choice, an act of supreme freedom whose reasons, of course, we do not know; for the ICBM this is a great loss, and I can announce right now that we will take care of everything, the transportation, the funeral, etc., wherever his nearest and dearest decide.”

I went to the dining room, wanting to be alone. In the rush to get out, I forgot to say that I still had the photograph of Walter and the book,
Encounters
, in my jacket. I sat down at one of the tables at the far end, ordered an omelet and a beer, and settled down to read, but as I took out the book a sheet of paper fell out, it was a message on headed hotel notepaper saying:
José, we've found you
. I was stunned, and read it several times. The words boomed in my head like an echo in a cave:
We've fooouuund yooouuu, oouund yoouuu, yoouu!

The message bore the time, 19:38 that same day. Everything was clear now: Maturana had decided to kill himself after reading it, perhaps because of it, who was it who had found him? I gulped my food down and went back to my room. Marta was drinking a Coke and chatting on Facebook. Seeing me, she cried, did you forget my sandwich? I can't concentrate, damn it, I have less than ten minutes left and I don't even have a title, this is a disaster, I'm just telling a Spanish friend I met on Erasmus all about it . . . Don't write any more, I said, Maturana didn't kill himself.

Marta looked at me incredulously, why do you say that? Look at this, I said, he received it today. Marta looked at the message with intensity and said, and what does this prove? It proves this is all very strange, don't you think? At that moment the telephone rang and Marta said, it's my newspaper, can you answer for me? tell them I'm doing an interview, and that I need more time. I lifted the receiver and gave the excuse, but they said, we're getting the news on the wire, so it's covered, just tell her to write us a good article for tomorrow. That solved everything. I showed her the book and the photograph and Marta said, good, let's get to work, where do we start? I'll help you on one condition, which is that you let me tell the story. I accepted and said: we have to start with the message, find out who sent it, the operator who gave it to Maturana may know.