Divorce Is in the Air (8 page)

Helen came into my Salamanca bachelor pad with the intention of staying (I almost said “staying under my wing”). And not only did I open my home to her, I did something even more insane, just because it seemed the natural thing to do. I asked her to marry me in a civil ceremony. Her parents could meet mine later (neither of us noticed the other's shudder of horror), and we would formalize our union on a grander scale, as only priests can do.

Granted, in one sense we'd only been fucking. Sure, our sexual fervor had formed canals that irrigated all our worldly activities: I'd be at the cinema or getting dinner, leaving a meeting, taking a short walk to a taxi stand, and my nerves would remind me of the singular pleasure of squeezing her breast, of removing her swimsuit, of kissing the lips of her cunt. It was the kind of relationship where what you want is not a safe distance from which to evaluate your partner with equanimity, but rather to get her into a house with you ASAP where she's always in reach of your appetite. The kind of relationship that demands you live together or let the lust devour your thoughts down to the root of your brain; think of it like the fire of a biblical marriage—an unstoppable love.

A civil union was as sad back then as it is now, but the event was eroticized by its furtive unexpectedness. I showed up in morning dress, wearing a black tie that, since I'd arrived in Madrid, had led a sorry itinerant life through the offices of accountants, bureaucrats, and lawyers specializing in financial rescue. Though we'd promised to leave our families out of it, I couldn't resist sporting Dad's cuff links. Vicente, whose name Helen took pains to pronounce as if it were spelled “Bicente,” came as our witness. We paired him with a chubby Italian woman whom my fiancée presented as her “dearest friend” and whom my wife didn't take half a morning to condemn to the abyss of traitors (and now that I think about it, I never found out why). The sky was lofty, blue, smooth, promising. The extremities on my left side trembled as Bicente and the other fifteen people we invited to round out the party threw rice at us. Someone blew a horn of German origin that for years afterward I thought was a tradition from Helen's homeland (the Thrushes had migrated from the Neckar valley to the shuddering depths of America). For the first time ever, we kissed with our tongues tucked under the domes of our palates, and when the cold putty of her lips touched mine, I felt my nerves prickle lasciviously. Suddenly it didn't seem a bad idea for Catholics to impose premarital chastity. With his eyes closed, the groom could follow his blood from heart to peripheral organs, letting it lick the walls of his veins as he anticipated the nakedness that, once uncovered in dread and excitation, he could savor all night long under the light of a honey-soaked moon.

We ate dinner in a restaurant with tables set out under the shade of two oak trees. We treated ourselves to a banquet of salads and tempting fish with shiny scales, and however I try to recall that scene, I always come back to the same little branch of scorched thyme standing out against the white of the plate. Not as white, though, as the “surprise” cake Bicente had ordered, which was precisely what you'd expect from a mind as simple and optimistic and content and good as that of my dear friend from Madrid: icing, our names, the outline of a heart. In the elevator going upstairs we barely looked at each other, victims of a sudden modesty, and Helen noticed me twirling my wedding ring as if it were too tight. I couldn't even muster an erection when her stockings came off. The night was so rehearsed it was as if I could hear the audience breathing, and I felt the expectations of the entire species weighing on the back of my neck. As you know, if I ever attract the attention of passers-by it's only because they've caught me in a spontaneous outburst of histronics. I've never sought out the spotlight.

“Let's just keep the party going.”

And so, rather than nursing my wounded masculinity or relieving my troubles by banging my head against the wardrobe mirror, we caught a taxi to Chueca and hopped from bar to bar drinking gin and tonics, enchanted with our existence. The fabulous couple, the most sociable newlyweds the city had ever seen, rejecting propositions from men, from women, married couples, you name it—even urban centaurs: females from the waist up, males between their legs. And we went back to the bed in that apartment that didn't feel like ours, but to which we had the key, no small thing. And, half undressed, my ring rolling off into the corner where it took us five days to find it, we undertook the first married variation of the exhilarating, vigorous yoking of love. I won't go into detail, but I felt pretty good about having married a woman who expressed herself freely, who faced problems head-on without complicated grievances. A woman you could surprise with an embrace from behind and she wouldn't make you feel like a savage. A woman with whom I didn't have to temper my occasional fits with doses of timidity just to acclimate to the social temperature in the room. Here was a woman who knew how to laugh out loud, who knew how to shout, a woman who wouldn't give in, who knew how to fight so we'd be purified inside: she was an innocent beast.

I was supposed to return the keys to the apartment a week later, but I'd decided to arrange things so we could stay in Madrid. Bicente would help, and so would all those friendly citizens who snack in the streets and always invite you to join them. I knew only too well what awaited me in Barcelona, and I'd gotten married before I could even tell Helen, much less figure out how to handle it. Plus, Helen was no good for Barcelona. She wasn't like you or the rest of those Eixample show ponies—with your insipid air of contrition and tight buttocks, all of you convinced you're standing at the top of the podium, from where you can turn in disdain to survey the rest of the world in all its backwardness (oh, that expanse of provincial villages). That night I dozed off convinced that Helen would bow to my superior wisdom, content to let herself be dragged through the steps of a manly dance. I fell asleep satisfied, a man ready to enjoy a marriage underpinned by reason.

But she was against it. She told me she couldn't stand the smell of garlic in Madrid, the stench of fried food, all the short, squat guys with their African looks, the hours of raw sun without shade that burned the streets and the buildings: a string of words smeared with American bullshit. Helen had been in Madrid two or three months (I didn't pay attention to the tally) and she still saw us through a lens of WASPy contempt (though I'd love to hear what a real WASP would have to say about her hips or that Teutonic jaw of hers). No matter where she was in the city she could hear a bull in agony, its saw-like shriek; she saw blood dripping down the walls (that was a good one), she couldn't stand the women's saggy backsides, the shadow of hair on their arms, the thunderous streets, the pink ties, the unpunctuality, so much vulgarity, the toothpicks. The toothpicks!

“I want to live in Barcelona.”

As if we were still on rational ground, I wondered what she thought she'd find in Barcelona: the same smells, similar light, craftier people, posers, exclusive circuits and cliques, spoiled fake blondes, suburban tracksuits, bumpkins from Alicante wearing thick-rimmed glasses, gossip, people who get choked up at the sight of grown adults holding hands and dancing in a circle; two flags, two languages, laughable politics, plastic bars, and that nightlife like a filthy, evil vacuum cleaner that sucks a guy in and teaches him to be his very worst.

“I can't live so far from the ocean.”

I would have taken it better if she'd invoked Montjuïc, if she'd talked to me about Gaudí, about the Olympic Games, or Mariscal's zoo full of moronic animals. But she disarmed me, that sea dog from Montana—a region celebrated for its open seas and marine vistas. There's something so alluring in the most irreducible parts of other people's absurdity; I'm left paralyzed and trembling in fascination. And what ocean was she planning to enjoy in Barcelona? That stretch of watered-down oil lapping at a shore of make-believe sand? I didn't say anything, but I was on to her. Most people who long to live by the sea really just want to move to a city with a port, and there you have a good explanation. Helen wanted to spend her afternoons at customs, captivated by the heavy coming and going of ships, entertaining ideas of departure: a whole world before her, at whose center she imagined herself happy (
that
word).

As I lustily stirred the tomato sauce to keep it from sticking to the only crappy pot I had, I decided that if there was one place we were not going to live, it was Barcelona. I would have rather set up shop in Bilbao, or in a Sevilla boardinghouse, or in some tiny village that Helen would find “cute.” If she wanted to see the breakwaters and the grime in Barcelona, we could always visit. Of course, it wasn't just that I didn't want to have my arm twisted. I had half a dozen airtight reasons, and as soon as Helen stopped screeching and throwing clothes in suitcases, I would impose them on her until she was subdued by common sense.

But when I tried to reason with her, Helen went off to hide in a corner. My arguments drove her away as if I'd thrown a bucket of boiling water over her. I thought she would come around, you see, but she didn't. The invisible molecules of machismo in the air I breathed had me convinced that three out of every four girls (give or take) moved through the world like fog, dampening things but never touching them, never taking charge. I was convinced they didn't have words that stemmed from solid beliefs, and that they simply went along with the shifting moods of the moment. I wasn't prepared for the woman I was living with to refuse to comply when it came to important decisions. This wasn't about what color we were going to paint the walls or whether we should assemble the bed in this room or in the goddamn hallway. This was about where we were going to settle down, in which streets: whether we would stay in Madrid where I could call in favors and stall until my prospects improved, or whether we would move to a city where the word “problems” would swell up and fill my mouth again with its vile taste. I had little experience with people who really mattered to me, people who, for the sake of economy—or hygiene!—or just to keep from jumping out the window, we find ourselves obliged to presume are sane. What I mean is that this was crucial, and even though Helen didn't know what she was talking about, I threw in the towel, I gave in, I bent right over. And worst of all is that I didn't even kid myself, I knew no good would come of it, I had to put my foot down and I didn't, that's all there is to it. That neck I could have wrung with my bare hands was propping up a head full of crazy ideas about Europe, but we were going to live according to its rules. Now
that
was cause for alarm.

We boarded the plane, and my worries were swept away by that cloud-soaked sky. I've never been afraid of heights; I love to look out the window and see roads crossing the land while the distance rearranges the far-off horizon. I well knew the terrain beneath us on that journey: the grass-covered stands of an open-air basketball court, the slopes of rosy mud, and the forest of oaks with their treetops full of birds that took flight, frightened by the plane's sound. That trip I noticed the concrete ovens of a power station, and a dry area where bulldozers' teeth had broken the earth into clumps. Helen hung from my arm, and I smelled the minty scent of the candy she was sucking on, soaked in sweet saliva. The same saliva that, when she kissed me, so intoxicated me I thought I could see the ants moving in the open furrows of the ground below. Then we flew over a swampy river formed by several streams converging, and it was exciting to watch as the channel swelled and invaded the green expanse of the plain, dotted with yellow, blue, and ochre flowers.

The afternoon sun was starting to wane by the time we reached the ocean. Helen's elation was contagious. She pointed at the speedboats floating on the monotonous blue, and we flew over wild coves, far from any apartments, gray piers, or artificial beaches. The coast regained its old frontier power: the end of the road for men of dry land. Before discovering latitude, throughout all those numberless centuries, the ocean routes were invisible, unknowable. Who among our great-grandparents could ever have imagined we would make our way into the skies? I'm sorry that I'll miss out on interstellar tourism. Just imagine having a drink while you watch the Earth shrink into a vivid blue ball suspended in profound blackness, all that life protected by a flimsy film of atmosphere.

Since it was a clear day, I could point out to Helen the bulge of the coastal mountains rising like a limestone dream. We left behind little villages ensconced in the foothills, broad industrial belts, desert polygons, suburbs that spread like gray stains, and by seven o'clock I was pointing out the Torre Mapfre skyscraper that shone as clean as porcelain above the beige expanse of sand. I explained the grid-like layout of the Eixample, its cubic blocks, I named the thick furrow where the traffic flowed so slowly that each car's flash of sunlight was visible; it reminded Helen of a water snake's scales. She had her face pressed so hard against the window it wouldn't have surprised me if the glass melded to her shape: her skin was hot, her lips damp, the love we gave off bathed the city in a welcoming light. Some days earlier, I'd been reading about the labyrinth of sewers and water lines that extended beneath the pavement and the pedestrians' footsteps, like an inverse city designed for rats. Of course, I didn't mention all that to Helen; after all, we'd be living aboveground.

We were going to settle in Muntaner, between Via Augusta and Mitre, the area newcomers considered to be the rich neighborhood—a place that always smells like flowers, something like that. We were living up a hill on a street with four dirty lanes, like a filthy highway. It wasn't even an apartment, although it had its charm. It was a kind of guard tower, seventy square meters, which the developer had built on the roof to live in while he completed the facade and applied the finishing touches, and they'd forgotten to tear it down when they were done. Two rooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom with a door that didn't close properly. Parquet floors, low ceilings, and a half-finished round plaster molding adorning the center of the bedroom ceiling like a coin corroded by acid. My father had ended up with the place in some business deal, and he'd arranged to keep the other neighbors from using their keys to the roof, in the middle of which the Turret reared up. Helen and I came to consider it our most prized possession.