Читать книгу August - Romina Paula - Страница 9

3.

Before leaving town the bus makes a stop in Liniers. The seat I chose isn’t bad, all things considered. It has a number of pros: it’s upstairs, more or less in the middle. There’s no one next to me. The only little con, which I do detect immediately, is that right exactly where my part of the window is there’s a divider—I mean, the window, the glass, is bisected smack-dab where my face is. This is bad because the view will not be optimal, although I still think I did okay, in terms of safety it’s a good thing because it’s a divider that could absorb a blow, you know, if it ever came to that. It’s a divider that isn’t glass at least. So I reconcile myself to that metal/rubber strip standing between me and the landscape.

Getting out of the city itself is hell, it takes an hour to get from the station in Retiro to the neighborhood of Liniers. Emilia from Retiro to Liniers, that could be the name of another movie. In that hour, Clemente, the attendant charged with making our bus ride more comfortable, busies himself with welcoming us and explaining that they will be serving a hot dinner, followed by coffee with a whiskey option after for the movie they will show, then breakfast on our approach to Bariloche. Clemente is very excited about his job and about his microphone, he’s very excited to be able to tell us everything he tells us and to be able to do it over a microphone. Clemente darts between the rows of seats and insists we not deposit solid waste into the toilet. He repeats this. He says: We repeat, no solid waste. The prohibition alone upsets my stomach. The seat is wide and there’s no one sitting next to me, the bus isn’t that full, they have wine to go with dinner and whiskey for later, but all of this that bodes so well in the beginning quickly turns into nightmare: Clemente feels obliged to entertain his passengers nonstop. Like we can’t just look out the window. When he’s not talking on his microphone, he’s walking around passing out things, taking up things, offering us refills, asking if we’re too warm, if we’re cold, if the AC’s okay. I try to look out the window so that he doesn’t talk to me, and he ends up suggesting I shut the curtains because of the rocks. Rocks? There’s nothing outside but prairie, not even any little towns. There’s not even a landscape to look at anymore. So then I try to get into the movie, which has been on for ages already and has this man with all these arm muscles trying to play nanny to a group of extremely blond children who are having none of it. He has bottles in his belt like grenades. It doesn’t work. I’m not into it and I can’t sleep. Clemente comes and goes. For god’s sake, Clemente, enough already. There are some people who are actually snoring now. I realize that the trip I had pictured and hoped for is not going to happen now. That that thing about looking out the window and letting go and permitting my mind to wander freely is no longer possible. I’m trapped inside a moving box that smells like armpit and has Clemente drifting around all over everywhere. And I’m tired, but I’m not sleepy.

I disobey Clemente and crack the curtains. You can’t see much, but I have to distract myself from the bodybuilding nanny. I want to be able to get some distance from Buenos Aires, let Buenos Aires go, in order to be able to understand my situation there as it actually is. I think about Manuel’s face by the side of the bus at the station, think about his faded jeans, his tennis shoes, his curls, remember how he looked at me, waited until right as we were leaving with his hands in his pockets, the candy—the little umbrella-shaped candy and the chocolates—that he slipped into my pocket when we hugged that final time. I feel like I already miss him, which happens with those relationships where you see the other person so much they become a necessary outgrowth, which is the thing about them that’s not good. It throws me off or at least just throws me for a loop to have his body be in fact so far away from mine. I’ve gotten out of the habit now, that’s what it is, I’m out of the habit. I’m out of the habit of being by myself. Now, on this bus, I begin to be aware of something like Manuel withdrawal. And yet, is he the person I choose, would I choose him now, from scratch? Could I in fact now choose not to choose him? Did I choose him, did I choose all this at some stage? How did it even start? I can barely even remember how it started. Through Ramiro, I guess. That’s right, at some party. After a number of evenings, of course, and afternoons of drinking yerba mate, too. From me taking no notice of him to me not paying much attention to him to me being obsessed with this other guy from school and not seeing Manolo as anything other than one of my brother’s friends. To finding out all of a sudden because my brother tells me, reluctantly, almost in spite of himself, that this guy, this Manolo, really likes me, that this curly headed kid just really likes me and has been asking after me. And then I’m caught off guard: I hadn’t noticed that he liked me at all, I had never thought of it, not at all, not ever, never for a moment had I thought of him as a possible prospect. To getting drunk later at some party and ending up kissing him, after some concert, in Banfield or in Lanús, to me throwing up, and him taking care of me and wanting to keep kissing me even after I had thrown up, and then coming back on a train to Constitución one Sunday morning, my face resting on his jacket or his scarf or in between his jacket and his scarf. From not having thought of it ever before to sleeping with him and then being inseparable from him from that moment forward. Two years now, since that morning, and I never once so much as reflected on it, not before, not after, not during, everything just sort of drifting along, of its own accord, and I started to grow fond of him gradually until suddenly I was very fond of everything, and we never really parted after that time we kissed up by that stage after that concert in Lanús. Or in Banfield. Where I liked that he took care of me when I threw up, that he kept kissing me after, and that he held my hand on the way to the station, with my purse slung over his shoulder, to help. I liked that he was holding my hand already, like we were together, liked him taking certain liberties I let him take because I was drunk, because I wasn’t feeling well, and also because I also felt kind of good, that, too.

Clemente wakes us up in the morning, not without violence, putting on a DVD of Latin music videos. I open my eyes, and besides Patagonia I see Ricardo Montaner in white on some Greek terrace, which is very white, singing to this dark-haired girl in a flowy dress attempting to look attractive, on some beach somewhere. Ricardo sings on boats, at sunset, in interiors with terracotta vases. Clemente comes and goes, ever diligent. His hair is styled, he’s put some effort into it. He sets a tray on my lap while I try to get rid of the groove the window frame left on my cheek. My forehead is moist and my hair is all squashed. My forehead is damp from the condensation on the window. Outside, the mountains. In about an hour we’ll be in Bariloche. I had a strange dream, which I can’t quite remember, but something, lurking. Some familiar sensation, something recovered.

When I get off the bus in Bariloche, the wind from Nahuel Huapi Lake rustles my bangs, and the icy air unstops my nose, fills it with the smell of people. I feel the cold in my teeth, open my mouth, drink it in. Breathe in a mouthful of southern air. I’m starting to feel good. Now, from here, from this station, while I wait to get my bag back, Manuel, with his pants and his curls, seems far away/removed.