The Manual of Darkness (37 page)

The silence that follows is a relief, like someone shutting off an engine. Well, at least now she knows what she’s up against. Don’t say this, don’t mention that … She’s clearly landed herself a grouch. History is full of whining blind people, some of them famous. It’s one of the many possible reactions described by psychologists. What can you do?

All her efforts to come up with a theory, an inference from her notes, something that might help her deal with this situation, now crystallize in one name: Frijda. N. H. Frijda. She can’t remember what the initials stand for. She goes back and stands in front of her books, racking her brains for the title of a book she hasn’t read since she was at university. It was
The Laws of Emotion
or something like that. And there was a chapter in it called ‘The law of hedonic asymmetry’. A horrible phrase, she thinks. Alicia smiles. She is trying to remember Frijda’s exact words. ‘Pleasure is always contingent upon change and disappears with continuous satisfaction. Pain may persist under persisting adverse conditions.’ Something like that. She remembers how the idea fascinated her when she first read it. If the waters of perpetual happiness flowed from a wellspring, we would quickly stop drinking from it. On the other hand, we can bathe our wounds for all eternity in the fetid wellspring of pain. Time heals no wounds; it only makes them deeper, darker.

It is not much of a step forward. She can hardly show up tomorrow morning and say to Víctor: ‘I know what’s happening to you. You’re a victim of the law of hedonic asymmetry as set out by someone named Frijda.’ Now that she has witnessed his predilection for irony, she can easily imagine what he would say: ‘No, dear, no. What’s happening to me is that I’ve gone blind.’ But to put a name to a thing helps a little. No matter how horrible the name. Or the thing. This is what Alicia believes.

C
laude Monet is one of the most prominent figures in the Gallery of Famous Blind People; a small, exclusive gallery in the afterlife to which, down the centuries, a number of great men have been admitted to receive eternal restitution for their blindness. It hardly matters in which period they lived, because here, a place that exists only in Alicia’s mind, everyone wears timeless clothing and recounts, without the least trace of bitterness, the details of their agonies in this world.

However, although no one ever mentions it, Monet’s presence here makes many of them uneasy. First and foremost because of his habit (unconscious, it must be said in his defence) of squinting as he paints, as though he still can’t see properly, or is irritated by the lighting conditions. No one here likes to be reminded that they are blind, or rather that they used to be. Because one of the advantages of the Gallery of Famous Blind People is that, simply by stepping inside, a person automatically recovers his sight. This, incidentally, leads to a number of people comparing grievances, a case in point being Ella Fitzgerald, who goes around in a wheelchair, legs amputated, bitching (not unreasonably): ‘All things considered, I’d rather they’d left me blind and given me back my legs. Or cured my diabetes, since that’s what caused the problem in the first place.’

This tic Monet has of constantly squinting irritates a lot of people. There is abundant light in the gallery. This is why Ray Charles always wears his sunglasses. Furthermore, there’s always more than one volunteer who would be happy to remind Monet that, technically, he doesn’t qualify as being blind. Or at least not completely blind. The artist grumpily defends himself: ‘So you’re saying three operations aren’t enough for you? Well?’ And he goes
on painting. If they really think he doesn’t belong here, let them throw him out. Maybe he wasn’t completely blind but there is more than enough proof of the catastrophic effects the loss of sight had on his life. In letters to friends, he always reserved a paragraph to describe his constant dread that he would no longer be able to paint. And he finds it funny that it is always the musicians who complain about whether or not he should be allowed in. What do they know? They can bitch all they like – their blindness didn’t do them any harm. On the contrary, a lot of them wouldn’t even have become musicians if it weren’t for their parents desperately trying to compensate for their blindness by giving them special favours. Private music teachers, for example. Now if Beethoven wanted to chuck him out, or criticise him, that might be different. But … blind musicians? They should get on with their playing and leave him in peace. He has got more right to be in this gallery than any of them: you can dictate a score, you can’t dictate a painting.

Besides, if he’s grumbling it’s because he always was a whiner. Nobody really wants to throw him out. Monet devoted the greater part of his life to cultivating opium because in his day it was thought to be a cure for cataracts. As we’ve already pointed out, no one here suffers from cataracts or any other visual impairment. But a little opium never goes amiss when certain memories start to nag. Or old vices, as with good old Ray Charles. Or when Bach starts to bore them rigid with his endless fugues and counter-fugues. Will Víctor have enough of a sense of humour to understand this story?

‘A
nd now I want you all to imagine your body is full of hinges.’ Although Alicia has been taking biodance classes with Viviana Szpunberg for more than four years, she is still surprised by the grating tone of her deep voice, as though her vocal cords were intended to be played with a bow. ‘Forget everything we’ve talked about and imagine that your body is full of hinges. Today we’re going to work on the concept of opening and closing. With the whole body. The whole body, remember.’

It all started with a leaflet picked up in a bar late at night, and even now she doesn’t know why she chose biodance rather than ju-jitsu, Pilates, belly-dancing or kundalini yoga. Curiosity, maybe. And the desire to do something with her body. Express herself. At the beginning of each session, they all sit on the floor in the lotus position and tell each other how their week has been. Just twenty minutes; nothing too detailed. Just something to ease their burden. Alicia manages not to say anything that might compromise her too much and listens carefully to what everyone else says, though without ever becoming too involved. Then Viviana puts on some music and gives instructions: today, we are going to explore the limits of our body; today, the sense of balance; today, the ability to go beyond; today, the need for the other. That kind of thing. It’s not dancing exactly, since everyone does whatever they like, they’re not even expected to move to the rhythm of the music. All Viviana asks for is total commitment. The first year, Alicia felt so self-conscious that for several sessions she barely moved at all, apart from rocking slightly so no one could accuse her of not taking part. She watched Viviana, expecting her to give instructions, something that would tell her exactly what she should do. As though some invisible jury – or one that was ever present in the
watchful eyes of Viviana, someone Alicia still did not know how to refer to: teacher, therapist, guru – were judging her. It’s not a dance competition, Viviana used to say. Do whatever you feel, it doesn’t matter if it’s awkward, just move, allow your bodies to speak. Getting used to it, and a couple of private conversations with Viviana, put an end to her awkwardness. The second year was a liberation. She participated in every session with genuine passion; pouring out – in addition to pints of sweat – everything about her day-to-day existence that words could not express. From that moment, she turned biodance into a more constructive, more complete experience. Now, the very idea of missing a session is unthinkable. That is not to say that every Tuesday goes perfectly. Sometimes her body has only hateful things to express, but that doesn’t matter. It’s all part of the therapy. And when it does happen, she has no problem throwing herself against a wall or crawling across the floor like a black beetle, to the astonishment of the neophytes who join every year.

Today she tells everyone that she’s happy because she has her first blind person. She doesn’t need to say any more. They know she has been waiting for months. She doesn’t talk about the problems. When they’ve finished speaking, Viviana asks them to get to their feet and puts on some music. The music is always a single melody repeated for the whole session. It’s part of the ritual. On the third or fourth repeat, Alicia forgets the music, or rather, she becomes a part of it, so much so that the melody and rhythm become part of her body, tracing a spiral around her and protecting her from the gaze of others, from embarrassment. Today, the music is a playful clarinet. Jewish music, thinks Alicia. She remembers having heard melodies like this in a film, a troupe of musicians, maybe playing at a wedding. Or maybe they were Gypsies. Whatever, it seems more appropriate to a march than a dance: it’s a two-step, almost a hymn.

Alicia starts with the obvious, the hands. Open and close, she splays her fingers wide as though she wants to project them, detach them from herself. Then she closes them tightly, not caring that her nails are digging into her palms. Little by little, she brings other parts of her body into play. She spreads her shoulders, slowly stretching her arms behind her until her hands touch behind her
back, then folds them back across her chest, curling her torso into a ball. This is just a warm-up. She has not even begun. She is still thinking about what she is going to do. Viviana calls this self-awareness. Don’t think. We’re not here to think, she tells them, we’re here to express ourselves. Suddenly, she thinks of her toes; these can be opened and closed too, though as she does this, it becomes difficult to maintain her balance as she wheels around the room. She always spins, sometimes simply on the spot, sometimes hugging the walls, sometimes circling the other dancers. It is part of the process that allows her to put everything out of her mind, the music, time, the world. Now she is opening and closing her navel without even realising it, her abdominal muscles contracting and relaxing as she breathes deeply. And suddenly she realises that air is the key that can open and close all the doors in her body; she opens her lungs, really opens them, and an explosion of air comes from her mouth, which has also just opened and closed, because now every muscle in her body seems to be following some predetermined pattern, though clearly not one she has made. She can open and close several parts of her body simultaneously. Her attempt to bend her knees and ankles at the same time almost sends her sprawling to the floor, but she catches herself in time because the dance, the spiral she is tracing, saves her. She feels like an astronaut, spinning in zero gravity, and at precisely that moment, she makes her first leap. Though seen from without, jumping might not seem like opening and closing; every time Alicia launches herself into the air, hurling herself forward, she feels her whole life opening up only to close around her again as the soles of her feet strike the floor. By the fourth leap, she feels as though some mysterious hand is compelling her to fly, and although it is only a fleeting impression, she jumps so wildly that she has time to open and close every possible muscle before she lands again. Her groin takes the force of the blow and Alicia contracts her vagina. The vagina, she thinks, I forgot about the vagina. She goes on spinning, opening and closing it continually. It’s easy. Like trying to hold it in when she needs to pee. And then Viviana’s voice roars over the music: ‘I said your whole body, damn it. You don’t think your eyes are part of your body? Alicia, you should know this better than anyone.’ She opens them wide, so her face
looks almost comical, like an actress in a silent film. At this moment, she cannot help but think of Víctor, the ghost of Víctor, with his eyes open on nothing, and the dance is over. She stops, frozen in the middle of the room. The magic has melted away. Besides, she really needs to pee now. It doesn’t matter: the session is almost over. They’ll do a few relaxation exercises and then everyone will head home. No one talks. They should think about the meaning of everything they’ve done, Viviana always says to them, telling them to take deep breaths. And everything they didn’t do. Especially the things they didn’t do.

As they are leaving, she gives each of them a piece of paper with the details of today’s music:
Lustige Hasidim
, Alicia reads. Margot Leverett and the Klezmer Mountain Boys. She might buy this one. Sometimes, Viviana makes a little comment: you were magnificent today, Ali. Pity about the end. Thanks, Vivi. Alicia says her goodbyes and goes out into the street with the peaceful, contented weakness that comes with physical exercise. Your life is good, Alicia.

A
s she starts up the hill at Mayor de Gracia, Alicia lifts her bottom off the bicycle seat so she can lean her whole weight on the pedals. She cycles with such fury that she arrives ten minutes early, though she doesn’t realise this since she has not looked at her watch. Even Víctor’s cheerful tone as he greets her over the intercom does nothing to mollify her. She drags her bicycle into the entrance, banging her foot against one of the pedals, then drops it with a crash and dashes up the stairs as fast as she can, still muttering to herself. When she gets to the top, she finds the door ajar, as it was yesterday, and senses Víctor’s presence on the other side. She is about to push the door and walk in, but then she takes a step back and decides to have done with these ambushes once and for all. She reaches out her hand, closes the door, and rings the bell. She waits for two or three seconds, then rings again, keeping her finger on the bell until he opens the door.

‘Look, Víctor,’ she says almost before she sees him. ‘Sorry … Look, listen, do whatever the hell you want. I’m paid to come here to help you as best I can. Maybe I don’t have much experience, but I’ve spent a lot of time and effort preparing for this. This is my job. It’s what I do. And I’m good at it. If you don’t want to carry on, fine. Call ONCE, tell them you don’t want me to come any more and I’ll take my act elsewhere. In the meantime …’