Читать книгу Gasoline - Quim Monzo - Страница 9

In the subway, sitting between a woman thin as a bag of bones and a man sleeping with his head between his knees, Heribert thinks that usually by this time of day he would already have been at work in the studio for three hours. Then he finds it strange to have thought “usually,” since lately he is there less and less, and he finds it easier and easier to come up with excuses, again “usually,” not to be there.

Across from him, a man is moving in syncopated time: he is drumming on the ground with his feet, as if following the rhythm of a song, but he isn’t wearing earphones and there is no radio on. At the next stop, this man and the man sleeping with his head between his knees get off with Heribert. The man moving in syncopated time stays on the platform, waiting for the express, and Heribert goes out into the street.

He walks into the bookstore and, as he goes through the turnstile, realizes that at no point had he been aware where his steps were leading him. Going in there was always dangerous; an afternoon might go up in smoke, as it could very well be (and, in fact, always is) several hours before he goes out again. That bookstore, divided into two enormous spaces on either side of the street, with two big splendid floors in each of the spaces, draws him like a circus show. He has always found libraries and bookstores more seductive than the books themselves. He likes to look at the rows of bindings. He likes to run his hands over the covers of the encyclopedias and dictionaries, open a volume at random to see the illustrations, stroke the glossy coated paper, peer closely at the letters till they reveal their hairy edges, their distortions. Ever since he decided, two months before, never to attend another art exhibit (they were all so mediocre), he sees everything around him as if it were an art exhibit and discovers unsuspected facets to every object.

The children’s books were on the ground floor. Children’s books bother him. It bothers him precisely that they are for children. He has never understood by what rights someone decides there is a dividing line that makes some books for children, some for adults, others erotic, still others porno, and, finally, those even farther beyond, romance. And it also bothers him that a whole line of shelves should display the title poetry. What do they mean by “poetry”? Or “romance”?

As soon as he sets foot on the escalator, he turns around so as to go up backwards and watch as the ground floor gets farther and farther away: the entrance, the turnstiles, the cash registers, the two immense tables of bargain books. When he realizes he has thought bargain books, his stomach turns. Isn’t that definition just as presumptuous as one that attributes amorous, poetic, or mysterious qualities to books while—nevertheless—he finds the former to be quite reasonable? At least until now. He feels like a child, playing at discovering already discovered things. When he turns around to get off the escalator and step onto terra firma, however, he realizes (as one enlightened, not knowing why) that the really childish thing is to refuse to admit that it is good for things to be classified; despite the imperfections of the labels, this is the only way to delimit them, understand them, control them, grasp them. (And to have designated that thought as childish is equally childish: no doubt about it; and the fact that he has to resort to another adjective in order to dismiss the first series of adjectives as stupid confirms it.) When he reaches the top, and lets his eyes wander over the signs in the different sections (cooking, home improvement, pocket books, textbooks, mysteries, art, fiction, new releases, bestsellers . . .), he feels that the most logical thing in the world is precisely for them to be classified. If not, what chaos! Even the sign that says poetry seems coherent and logical. Everyone knows what is to be found under that caption, and it is precisely that which makes it not merely valid, but indispensable. He even understands that the books on the shelves labeled mystery must, of necessity, be far from the shelves of the bestsellers. And if the book is both a mystery and a bestseller, it must be found under bestsellers, as this is the characteristic (additional, and thus more evident) that distinguishes it quite beyond its intrinsic mysteriousness. Always and ever, the surface of things: the part that can be touched and seen without need of opening and destroying it to find out what its innards are like. How is it possible that until now he has not perceived the wisdom of these classifications? It is evident, moreover, that the books in the fiction department must of necessity be there, and by no means in literature. He feels as if a long time has elapsed since those classifications so annoyed him with their arbitrariness, and yet it isn’t so: he was still laboring under that absurd misconception when he stepped on the escalator. (But he isn’t entirely wrong: for three weeks now—or perhaps a month—he has not been so sure of things as he used to be; it seems as if he has been changing imperceptibly and is no longer the same person: it could be, then, that what he was thinking as he stepped on the escalator was simply a thought born of his former self-assurance, and what has happened as he rose on the escalator is that, imperceptibly, he has begun to realize that the thought no longer jibes with his present state.) Once, in the beforehand that is becoming—more and more, and without his knowing why—irremediably distant, he had tried to figure out the systems and expose the contradictions hidden among the bookcases: Steinbeck was under fiction, and Hardy under literature. In those days he had found it arbitrary and had deduced that they considered literature to have died in the nineteenth century and, from that moment on, everything was fiction. But there were also flaws in that line of reasoning: Kafka was under literature. What was he doing there? He had reasoned that perhaps those twentieth-century authors whose lives had a certain, let’s say, tragic quality were sent to swell the shelves of literature. But now it is all clear to him: it’s obvious that Hardy and Kafka are literature, and Steinbeck, fiction. Why rock the boat? Even more to the point: in order for things to be useful to us, they must not be resisted, but accepted just as they are. He feels a chill at the nape of his neck. He pulls up the lapels of his coat but then realizes he’s hot: the heat is on so high that he’s sweating. He takes off his coat.

He peruses the art books. He leafs through one on Tamara de Lempicka, one on Hopper (which brings back snatches of the dream . . .), one on Matisse (that shows red flowers with violet spots that seem to move), and one on Magritte. Were there cockroaches there, too? He looks at the legs of the tables where the books lie, expecting to find termites. There aren’t any. He goes back to the book, turns the page, and sees the drawing of a pipe bearing the legend Ceci n’est pas une pipe. “It most certainly is not,” he thinks, feeling vaguely content.

He puts down the book on Magritte and picks up a few more books at random from another table, without looking at the titles. He sits in an armchair in a corner of the room. He watches the people who walk by. From time to time he leafs through one of the books, then another, pleased at being capable—despite his leafing-through—of not knowing what they are about. It is the books he’s interested in, not what they say. What they say awakens no passion at all. (Amazing to have felt this way for so long, only to be reasoning it through now for the first time!) Perhaps reasoning it through is a step backwards, though, because, in fact, feelings lie more on the surface of things. It is easy from him not to know what the books say. It is just a question of not noticing, of making an effort not to notice. It’s strange what’s happening to him: attitudes he would previously have considered stupid now delight him, and he finds honest and worthy those which at any previous moment he would have considered idiotic. Maybe he is evolving, becoming more mature. In an on-the-spot application of the ideas fluttering in his head, he sees that leafing through those books comes down, in the end, to a series of arbitrary gestures; and he finds it quite fine to be making arbitrary gestures. Why is it quite fine to be making arbitrary gestures? He doesn’t feel like responding and even considers it stupid to have posed the question. He finds thinking to be a bore. He finds this boredom to be another symptom of maturity. He lets his eyes wander over the shelves, trying not to register anything. He sees a girl leafing through a book and looking from side to side. He realizes right away that she wants to steal it. The girl looks behind her and meets Heribert’s gaze. The sudden flash of her eyes confirms Heribert’s impression that she wanted to steal the book that now, quite flustered, she is quickly returning to the shelf. In spite of his irritation at having realized what the girl had in mind (and therefore at not being able to continue running his eyes over things without registering them), he considers getting up, approaching her, and telling her to take the book without a second thought, as she’s mistaken if she’s taken him for a guard, or if she has taken his expression of curiosity for one of reproach.

When Heribert gets up, the girl has already disappeared behind some bookcases. He searches all over the room for her and only discovers her when, from the handrail, he casts an eye over the main floor: she is at the cash register, paying, waiting for the cashier to put a paperback in a bag, and darting quick glances at the escalator.

Heribert finds it illogical to leave without a book. It isn’t exactly illogical: it is somehow suspect. Suspect? In what way? The question also seems stupid to him. To punish himself, as he runs toward the table of art books and picks up a copy of the one on Tamara de Lempicka, he pinches his left arm with the fingers of his right hand. He is still running (and feeling upon his skin the stares of all the salespeople and customers), when he goes down the escalator. For a moment it seems strange that no one thinks he has stolen anything, but by the following moment it seems evident that no one who had stolen anything would run; so it wasn’t even necessary for him to buy a book: breaking into a sprint was quite enough. As he puts on his coat after paying at one of the cash registers, he sees the girl far away, across the street, walking south.

He crosses the avenue (so suddenly that two taxis collide in order not to hit him) and follows her, quickening his pace until he’s close enough not to lose sight of her. Then he slows up. He is all set to approach her and say: “I’m terribly sorry. I’m not a guard at that bookstore. I know you decided not to steal the book on my account: when I looked at you, you must have thought it was a reproach, but it wasn’t at all.”

He watches her walking in front of him. He thinks she looks like an Anna and doesn’t feel like trying to figure out why he thinks her name should be Anna and not Judith or Cynthia. Maybe Anne or Ann, or perhaps Carmen or Barbara; not Mary, though. He doesn’t know why, but he’s sure a girl who walks like that can’t be a Mary.

He falls into step with her and walks right by her side. After a while, though, he reflects that he can’t address her without conveying an intention quite extraneous to the pure and simple message he wishes to deliver. From close up, her face seems familiar, and from more than one occasion. He sees it against a backdrop of paintings or sculptures . . . At some exhibit? He starts to feel embarrassed, or shy, or scared, and he keeps looking at her, determined to say nothing even before her glance (surprised, both angry and frightened), makes him decide to diminish his speed, just as she accelerates. “Lately, I just seem to ruin everything,” he thinks. And, right after that, “It would have been more compelling to think ‘Lately, I just seem to ruin everything’ with tears in my eyes.”

•

He takes a quick look in all the rooms. As usual, Helena isn’t there. He thinks of preparing lunch, but at that point in the afternoon he decides it is more appropriate to skip lunch and prepare dinner. What, though? He opens the refrigerator and checks off the contents: ice cubes, a bottle of vodka, two bottles of white wine, butter, shrimp, chicken, beef, jams, several kinds of bread, tomatoes, string beans, corn, orange soda, grapefruit juice, tomato juice, sparkling water, onions, potatoes, olives, capers. The mere thought of figuring out what he could do with all that makes him dizzy. Perhaps only to avoid any more such musings, he decides that, precisely because it is so late, he can take advantage of these last moments of daylight: he goes up to his studio, prepares his paints, and turns on the radio. Without much enthusiasm, he continues filling in small strips of black on a canvas with a charcoal sketch of a man sitting on a stool with his head propped up on a bar.

Since this gets boring, he picks up the book he bought. He examines it, he touches it. He is so sure he’ll like it (both the book and every one of the plates, including the ones he’s never seen) that he puts off opening it. The longer he delays in opening the front cover and looking at the first page, the longer he puts off the pleasure of beginning to read it, the longer he will postpone the end. He also realizes that the sooner he begins to read it, the sooner he will finish it. (He quickly sees that this is just the same thing said backwards. For a moment he is surprised that one can say the same thing by saying it backwards. He perceives immediately that this is painfully obvious. Being surprised at self-evident things makes him feel corroded.)

For a while, he halfheartedly mulls over the thought that everything goes by (or everything has gone by him) too quickly in life. Then he wonders whether he isn’t putting off starting the book because, in fact, he’s not in the mood. Or is it this long line of thought he’s not in the mood for? More than a long line: an interminable line. He goes down to the living room. He turns on the television, goes to the kitchen, opens the refrigerator, takes out the bottle of vodka, pours himself a glass, goes back to the living room, sits down on the couch, and starts watching television. He remembers, though, that he hasn’t cleaned his brushes or turned off the radio. So he gets up, leaves the glass on the end table (and as he does it thinks that he ought to leave it on a coaster). Then it crosses his mind that he promised Hildegarda he would take her the record of the Dave Brubeck Quartet the next time they got together. He starts looking for it so he will know where it is when the time comes. One by one, he checks all the record covers, from the first to the last. Since he doesn’t come across it, he checks them all again, from the last to the first. When he’s done, he remembers that a few weeks ago Helena had lent it to Hipòlita. He sits down again in front of the television set just as a movie comes on. He is pleased to have arrived just in time.

Quite some time later, he realizes he doesn’t know what’s happening onscreen. He has seen the picture from the beginning, but now he wouldn’t be capable of explaining the plot. He decides to try: on the screen, two heterosexual couples (Heterosexual? he asks himself. Maybe it would be better to say of different sexes.) are arguing about he’s not sure what at a table in a restaurant. He uses the remote control to distort the colors: the people’s skin turns a reddish pink, like plastic, and the green of the tablecloth is practically fluorescent. It all seems so unreal, with that nervous drizzle that the color casts on actors and objects alike that, in the end, he feels better about it and is able to continue looking at the film without concerning himself with the plot or the actors’ gestures.

Two hours later his own snoring awakens him. He turns off the television and drags himself to bed.

•

He hears the rustling of sheets and asks himself if it is the rustling that has awakened him or if, a few moments before, he heard shoes hitting the floor, or if it’s just that, since he heard the rustling of sheets, he thinks he ought to have heard the sound of Helena undressing. Even if she folded her clothes carefully, shoes (in the quiet of the night) usually make noise when they hit the wood floor, and it is this sound that always awakens him. But what about earlier? Had he heard the floorboards creak under Helena’s feet? It worries him not to be able to tell exactly which sound has awakened him. It worries him that, little by little, he seems to be losing his previous auditory sensitivity; he used to have total awareness of the sounds around him, even when he was fast asleep, right down to the movements that had produced them.

His back feels cold. In a few minutes, Helena’s body, which is cold at the moment, will be warm, and it will be nice to turn over and put his arms around her, as if in his sleep. He thinks the scene would make a beautiful painting: a double bed, with a man sleeping on one edge and on the other a woman lifting the covers to get in. How would you know, though, whether she was lifting them to get in or out? This thought makes the image dissolve, and since he is absolutely certain he will not be able to retrieve it, he doesn’t even try. He continues to pretend to be sleeping, as if he weren’t aware that Helena had arrived. He opens one eye, and since from that position he can see neither the numbers nor the luminescent hands of the alarm clock on the night table, he shifts, as if he were dreaming, and (with his back still to Helena) positions his head in such a way that, by opening one eye, he can see the time: 4:15. He wonders whether to turn over and embrace her or wait for her to do it. Why is it that lately she doesn’t?

He hears her breathing regularly. Is it possible that she has already fallen asleep? All those endless meetings to set up the summer shows . . . He had always thought that even summer shows were programmed years (or at least many months) in advance. Helena, though, has such a nose for the new, such an ability to capture the pulse of the moment, that she can’t plan her shows more than a few months ahead. He has a nice long yawn and tries to go back to sleep. The image of a cockroach appears to him and, as hard as he struggles to erase it, it persists, leaving him more and more wide awake. Then he hears Helena breathing deeply, fast asleep. Before dozing off again (or waking up, as for days now—and, above all, since the night before—it is as if he were sleeping awake or as if he were living asleep) he opens an eye one last time to look at the clock: it’s 5:30.

•

Lately, he enjoys sleeping late more and more. Before, whenever he wasn’t out carousing the previous night, Heribert would get up about 9:00 (neither too late nor too early, he would tell himself), shower, have citrus juice for breakfast, and, around 10:00 or 10:30, go up to the studio, turn on the radio or the record player (now it tended more and more to be the radio, since having to choose which records he wanted to hear put him off), and paint until 2:00. Then he would have lunch—at home if Helena was there, at a restaurant if she wasn’t, since cooking for himself was a bore. The problem is that, tired of always going to the same restaurant, for some six months now he has been having lunch at a different place every day, and so, every time Helena isn’t home for lunch, he has to go farther away since (even counting the times—not frequent—that he’s cheated and gone twice to the same place) he has been to all the restaurants in the neighborhood and in the neighboring neighborhoods. Once or twice he has even taken the subway, crossed the river, and had lunch outside the city. But this isn’t his usual pattern, since it prevents his returning in the afternoon to start painting again (particularly now that he was preparing a double show which, according to Hug and Helena was to be the definitive proof that his triumph of the previous year is irrevocable), and it is imperative that he work in the afternoon because things are not proceeding at their usual pace. This is why he has abandoned his old routine (or lack of one) of doing nothing in the afternoon. Before, on occasion, he would go home, read, or watch TV or a video; or sometimes he would go out and have a look at the art shows. Other times (but definitely only once in a while) he did none of those three things and instead would go to the movies. Now, in his haste to do the paintings for the show, he goes back home and shuts himself up in the studio, to paint or to plan possible paintings (except on weekends and holidays, unless for some reason he considers it imperative). These last weeks, even though he’s been taking notes, at most he’s finished a couple of paintings he considers mediocre; and the date on which they would have to begin hanging the paintings in the two galleries is approaching at a rate that increases daily.

In the evenings, he meets up with friends. Mostly with Hug and Hilari, for dinner. Afterwards their schedules are anything but predictable, and even though he tries not to get home too late, so he’ll be able to get up early and get back to work, he still finds it equally hard to get up. Lately, what he likes best of all is to stay in bed and stare at the ceiling.

•

At nine o’clock sharp, the telephone rings. Helena stirs, buries her head in the pillow so as not to hear it, and goes on sleeping. Feeling his way, Heribert picks up the receiver. It’s Hilari, proposing dinner that evening. Hilari will bring along some girls he knows. They make arrangements. He hangs up. Heribert feels the sleep in his eyes, like fists, but he is too wide awake to go back to sleep.

Ten minutes later he is sitting with a half-grapefruit in front of him, which he is eating, section by section, with the aid of a serrated spoon. When he’s finished, he goes up to the studio, sits before the easel, prepares the paints, and continues painting black sections on the canvas of the man sitting on a stool. He is so tired that it is an effort for him to finish working on the man’s suit and the wood of the bar. A half hour later he hears noise in the kitchen, assumes it’s Helena who’s gotten up, and goes downstairs. While she spreads blueberry jam on a piece of rye bread, he opens a bottle of white wine and pours himself a glass.

“You look sleepy,” she says. “Give me a kiss. It’s the first one this year, you know. Mmm . . . That’s nice. First of all, Happy New Year, okay? How’s it going for you? Mine’s been just perfect. I had a great time. You know how much I like that city. It’s small without being depressing. It’s a shame you couldn’t come. One New Year’s Eve Hannah and I went to eat at a German restaurant, just gorgeous, where the waiters wore black vests and long white aprons all the way down to mid-calf. It was like being back at the turn of the century. And her house is just beautiful, a half hour outside the city. Did you get a lot or work done? You must be just about finished. I’ll be up in a few minutes to see what you’ve done. No? You’ve got to get a move on, sweetheart; there are only three weeks left. And at this rate . . . Did I say three? In two weeks they’ve got to be setting it all up. I’m tired of always running ragged at the last minute. At least you (you of all people) could have a little consideration for me. You’re not going to throw all this work out the window, now, are you? You wouldn’t be the first. This past year things have been going so well for you . . . With Hug you were getting along, but when you and I got together, it was perfection! This isn’t about me, it’s about the gallery, and (heck, why not?) about me, too. If you would only listen to me and . . . Why do you keep Hug on? Are you going to carry him all your life? Could Hug ever have gotten you the press I’ve gotten you since February? You don’t give me enough credit. You don’t listen to me. You listen to him, though. I’m going to call him and have him give you a talking-to. He should at least be good for that. I really think you trust him more than you trust me. Sure he got the world press to lie down at your feet, but I had already broken the ground for you. Who got the city papers to bow down to you? To get other countries to recognize you afterwards was easy. But here, it certainly wasn’t easy. And why did I do it? Because I love you. Come on, give me a kiss. Do you like my hair? You haven’t said a word about it. Now I ought to make a scene, like in the comics, when the husband comes home and doesn’t notice that his wife has a new hairdo. I had it done at Hannah’s hairdressers. And then I was so busy, I couldn’t even call you. Well, not that night, of course; that night we had people over for drinks to celebrate the summer program. In the summer a lot of novices come through and put even more thought into the organization so we don’t fill the summer shows with leftovers. What time is it? Getting up late makes the day so short. I’ve got to run. Mmmm . . . I’ve got a date with Hipòlita. Button me up, please. Thanks. Give me a little kiss. I won’t be home for lunch. And get a move on!”