The Insufferable Gaucho (8 page)

The Argentine delegation was sizable and the journey was pleasant.
Rousselot got to know two old Buenos Aires writers whom he considered his
masters. He tried to help them in any way he could, offering to render the sort
of little services one might expect from a secretary or a valet rather than a
colleague. This behavior was condemned by a writer of his own generation, who
called him obsequious and servile, but Rousselot was happy and paid no
attention. The stay in Frankfurt was enjoyable, in spite of the weather, and
Rousselot spent all his time with the pair of old writers.

The atmosphere of slightly artificial happiness was, in fact, largely
Rousselot’s own creation. He knew that when the festival was over, he would go
on to Paris, while the others would return to Buenos Aires or take a short
vacation somewhere in Europe. When the day of departure came and he went to the
airport to see off the members of the delegation who were returning to
Argentina, his eyes filled with tears. One of the old writers noticed and told
him not to worry, they would see each other again soon, and the door of his
house in Buenos Aires would always be open. But Rousselot couldn’t understand
what anyone was saying to him. He was on the brink of tears because he was
afraid of being left on his own, and, above all, afraid of going to Paris and
confronting the mystery awaiting him there.

The first thing he did, as soon as he had settled into a little hotel
in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, was to call the translator of
Solitude
(
Nights on the Pampas
), unsuccessfully. The phone rang, but no one
picked up, and when Rousselot went to the publisher’s offices, they had no idea
where the translator might be. To tell the truth, they had no idea who Rousselot
was either, although he pointed out that they had published two of his books,
Nights on the Pampas
and
Life of a Newlywed
. Finally, a
guy who must have been about fifty, and whose role in the company Rousselot
never managed to ascertain, identified the visitor, and, abruptly changing the
topic, proceeded to inform him, in an absurdly serious tone, that the sales of
his books had been very poor.

Rousselot then visited the publishers of
The Juggler’s Family
(which Morini, it seemed, had never read) and made a half-hearted attempt to
obtain the address of the translator they had employed, hoping that he would be
able to put him in touch with the translators of
Nights on the Pampas
and
Life of a Newlywed
. This second publishing house was significantly
smaller and seemed to be run by just two people: the woman who received
Rousselot, whom he guessed was a secretary, and the publisher, a young guy, who
greeted him with a smile and a hug, and insisted on speaking Spanish, although
it was soon clear that his grasp of the language was tenuous. When asked why he
wanted to speak with the translator of
The Juggler’s Family
, Rousselot
was at a loss for words, because he had just realized how absurd it was to think
that any of his translators would be able to lead him to Morini. Nevertheless,
encouraged by the publisher’s warm welcome (and his readiness to listen, since
he didn’t seem to have anything better to do that morning), Rousselot decided to
tell him the whole Morini story, from A to Z.

When he had finished, the publisher lit a cigarette, and paced up and
down the office for a long time in silence, from one wall to the other and back,
a distance of barely three yards. Rousselot waited, becoming increasingly
nervous. Finally the publisher stopped in front of a glass-fronted bookcase full
of manuscripts and asked Rousselot if it was his first time in Paris. Rather
taken aback, Rousselot admitted that it was. Parisians are cannibals, said the
publisher. Rousselot hastened to point out that he was not intending to take any
kind of legal action against Morini; he only wanted to meet him and perhaps ask
him how he’d come up with the plots of the two films in which he, Rousselot,
had, so to speak, a particular interest. The publisher burst into uproarious
laughter. It’s all about money here, he said, ever since Camus. Rousselot looked
at him, bewildered. He didn’t know whether the publisher meant that idealism had
died with Camus, and money was now the prime concern, or that Camus had
established the law of supply and demand among artists and intellectuals.

I’m not interested in money, said Rousselot quietly. Nor am I, my poor
friend, said the publisher, and look where it’s got me.

They parted with the understanding that Rousselot would call the
publisher and arrange to have dinner one night. He spent the rest of the day
sightseeing. He went to the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower; he ate in a restaurant
in the Latin Quarter, and visited a couple of secondhand bookshops. That night,
from his hotel, he called an Argentine writer he had known back in Buenos Aires
and who now lived in Paris. They weren’t exactly friends, but Rousselot admired
his work and had been instrumental in getting a number of his pieces published
in a Buenos Aires magazine.

The Argentine writer was called Riquelme and he was happy to hear from
Rousselot. Rousselot wanted to arrange to meet up some time during the week,
perhaps for lunch or dinner, but Riquelme wouldn’t hear of it and asked him
where he was calling from. Rousselot told him the name of his hotel and
mentioned that he was thinking of going to bed. Riquelme said, Don’t even think
of getting into your pajamas, I’ll be right there; it’s my treat tonight.
Rousselot was overwhelmed, powerless to resist. He hadn’t seen Riquelme for
years, and, waiting in the hotel lobby, tried to remember what he looked like.
He had blond hair and a round, broad, face with a ruddy complexion; he was
short. It had been a while since Rousselot had read any of his work.

When Riquelme finally appeared, Rousselot hardly recognized him: he
seemed taller, not so blond, and he was wearing glasses. The night was rich in
confessions and revelations. Rousselot told his friend what he had told his
French publisher that morning, and Riquelme told Rousselot that he was writing
the great Argentine novel of the twentieth century. He had passed the 800-page
mark, and hoped to finish it in less than three years. Although Rousselot
prudently refrained from asking about the plot, Riquelme explained several
sections of his book in detail. They visited various bars and clubs. At some
point during the night, Rousselot realized that both he and Riquelme were
behaving like adolescents. At first this embarrassed him, but then he
surrendered to the situation, happy to know that his hotel was there at the end
of the night, his hotel room and the word “hotel,” which in that instant seemed
a miraculous (that is to say instantaneous) incarnation of risk and freedom.

He drank a lot. On waking, he discovered a woman beside him. The
woman’s name was Simone and she was a prostitute. They had breakfast together in
a café near the hotel. Simone like to talk, so Rousselot discovered that she
didn’t have a pimp, because a pimp will always rip you off, that she had just
turned twenty-eight, and that she liked watching movies. Since he wasn’t
interested in the world of Parisian pimps and Simone’s age didn’t seem a
fruitful topic of conversation, they started talking about movies. She liked
French cinema, and before long they got onto Morini. His first films were very
good, in Simone’s opinion. Rousselot could have kissed her when she said
that.

At two in the afternoon they returned to the hotel and didn’t
re-emerge until dinner time. It would probably be true to say that Rousselot had
never felt so good in his life. He wanted to write, and eat, and go out dancing
with Simone, and wander aimlessly through the streets of the Left Bank. In fact,
he felt so good that during the meal, shortly before they ordered dessert, he
explained the reason for his trip to Paris. To Rousselot’s surprise, Simone was
not at all surprised by the revelation that he was a writer or that Morini had
plagiarized or copied his work, or freely adapted two of his novels to make his
two best films.

Things like that do happen, was her laconic response, and even
stranger things. Then, point blank, she asked him if he was married. The answer
was implicit in the question, and with a resigned gesture Rousselot showed her
the gold ring constricting his finger in that moment as it never had before. And
do you have children? asked Simone. A little boy, said Rousselot with a
tenderness engendered by the mental image of his offspring. And he added, He
looks just like me. Then Simone asked him to keep her company on the way home.
In the taxi, neither of them said a word; both looked out of their windows at
the unpredictable spills of bright and dark, which made the City of Light seem
like a medieval Russian city, or at least like the images of such cities that
Soviet directors used to offer for public consumption every now and then in
their films. Finally the taxi pulled up in front of a four-story building and
Simone invited him to come in. Rousselot wondered whether he should, and then he
remembered that he hadn’t paid her. Shamefaced, he got out of the taxi without
worrying about how he would get back to his hotel (there didn’t seem to be many
taxis in that neighborhood). Before going into the building, he held out a bunch
of uncounted bills, which Simone put into her handbag, without counting them
either.

The building didn’t have an elevator. By the time they reached the
fourth floor, Rousselot was out of breath. In the dimly lit living room an old
woman was drinking a whitish-colored liqueur. In response to a sign from Simone,
Rousselot sat down next to the old woman, who produced a glass and filled it
with that appalling liquid, while Simone vanished through one of the doors, then
reappeared after a while and summoned him with a gesture. What now? thought
Rousselot.

The room was small; it contained a bed in which a child was sleeping.
My son, said Simone. He’s lovely, said Rousselot. And he was a pretty child, but
perhaps that was only because he was sleeping. He had blond hair, which was
rather too long, and resembled his mother, although Rousselot noted that there
was already something thoroughly manly about his childish features. When he went
back to the living room, Simone was paying the old woman, who then took her
leave of Madame, and even wished her visitor an effusive good night, calling him
Sir
. Rousselot was thinking that the day had been eventful enough
and that it was time to leave when Simone said he could spend the night with
her, if he liked. But you can’t sleep in my bed, she said; she didn’t want her
son to see her in bed with a stranger. So they made love in Simone’s room, and
then Rousselot went out into the living room, lay down on the couch and fell
asleep.

He spent the next day
en famille
, so to speak. The little
boy’s name was Marc; Rousselot found him to be very bright (as well as speaking
better French than he did). The novelist spared no expense: they had breakfast
in the center of Paris, went to a park, had lunch in a restaurant on the Rue de
Verneuil, which he had been told about in Buenos Aires, then they went rowing on
a lake, and finally they visited a supermarket where Simone bought all the
ingredients for a proper French meal. They took taxis everywhere. As they waited
for ice-creams on a café terrace on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, Rousselot
recognized a pair of famous writers. He admired them from a distance. Simone
asked him if he knew them. He said no, but he was a passionate reader of their
books. Then go and ask them for an autograph, she said.

At first it seemed a perfectly reasonable idea, the natural thing to
do, but at the last moment Rousselot decided that he didn’t have the right to
annoy anyone, least of all people he’d always admired. That night he slept in
Simone’s bed; they covered each other’s mouths to stop their moans waking the
child, and made love for hours, violently at times, as if loving each other were
the only thing they knew how to do. The next day he returned to his hotel before
the child woke up.

His suitcase had not been put out in the street as he had feared, and
no one was surprised to see him appear out of nowhere, like a ghost. At
reception there were two messages from Riquelme. The first was to say he had
found out how to locate Morini. The second was to ask if Rousselot was still
interested in meeting him.

He showered, shaved, brushed his teeth (a horrifying experience), put
on clean clothes and called Riquelme. They talked for a long time. Riquelme told
him that a friend of his, a Spanish journalist, knew another journalist, a
Frenchman, who was a freelance movie, theater and music critic. The French
journalist had been a friend of Morini’s and still had his telephone number.
When the Spaniard had asked for the number, the Frenchman had given it to him
without a second thought. Then Riquelme and the Spanish journalist had called
Morini’s number without getting their hopes up, and were amazed when the woman
who answered told them that they had indeed reached the director’s
residence.

Now all they had to do was set up a meeting (at which Riquelme and the
Spanish journalist wanted to be present) on some pretext—anything, for example
an interview for an Argentinean newspaper . . . with a surprise ending. What do
you mean a surprise ending? shouted Rousselot. That’s when the bogus journalist
reveals his true identity and confronts the plagiarist, Riquelme replied.

That night, as Rousselot was taking photographs more or less at random
on the banks of the Seine, a bum came up and asked him for some change.
Rousselot offered him a bill if he would consent to be photographed. The bum
agreed, and for a while they walked along together in silence, stopping every
now and then to allow the Argentine writer to move off to an appropriate
distance and take a photo. On the third occasion the bum suggested a pose, which
Rousselot accepted without demur. The writer took eight photos in all: the bum
on his knees with his arms stretched out to the sides, and in other poses, such
as pretending to sleep on a bench, thoughtfully watching the river flow by, or
smiling and waving his hand. When the photo session was over, Rousselot gave him
two bills and all the coins in his pocket, and then the pair of them stood there
together, as if there were something more to be said but neither of them dared
say it. Where are you from? the bum asked. Buenos Aires, Argentina, replied
Rousselot. What a coincidence, said the bum in Spanish, I’m Argentine too.
Rousselot was not at all surprised by this revelation. The bum began to hum a
tango, then told him that in Europe, where he’d been living for more than
fifteen years, he had found happiness and even some wisdom now and then.
Rousselot realized that the bum had started using the familiar form of address,
which he hadn’t done when they were speaking in French. Even his voice, the tone
of his voice, seemed to have changed. Rousselot felt a deep sadness overwhelming
him, as if he knew that, come the end of the day, he would have to look into an
abyss. The bum noticed and asked him what he was worried about.